The Dalai Lama’s audience room had been transformed into a dining room. At the far end was an ornate golden Buddha encased in a colorful wooden box. The walls were hung with thangkas, brightly painted silk scrolls that depicted images of the Buddha and other Buddhist figures. They were traditionally hung on the walls of monasteries for brief periods of time to inspire meditative practice. They were used to encourage practitioners along the path of enlightenment.
The windows were covered with white lace curtains and the table was set for lunch with baskets of Tibetan flat bread and boxed juice containers. The whole setting was simple, almost like a picnic, and the meal was typical Tibetan food from the Dalai Lama’s kitchen. There were noodles and vegetables and momos, the famed Tibetan steamed dumplings.
The Dalai Lama and Archbishop Tutu sat across from each other. As I sat next to the Dalai Lama I could feel in his posture and his body language the power of a leader. I remembered how strongly and tenderly he had held my hand the first time we met. His kindness did not in any way diminish his power, a valuable reminder that compassion is a feature of strength, not weakness, a point they would make throughout our conversations.
When the Dalai Lama greets you, he takes your hand and then rubs it tenderly, as a grandparent might. He looks into your eyes, feels deeply what you are feeling, and touches his forehead to yours. Whatever feeling, elation or anguish, is in your heart and reflected on your face, it is mirrored in his. But then when he meets the next person, those emotions are gone and he is wholly available for the next encounter and the next moment. Perhaps that is what it means to be fully present, available for each moment and each person we encounter, untethered by the ruminating memories of the past and not lured by the anticipatory worry about the future.
The lunch began by returning to the theme of birthdays, aging, and mortality.
“I went to see a German specialist for knees,” the Dalai Lama said. “He found my physical condition very good. And then he told me my knees were the problem. He said you are not eighteen years old but eighty years old, so nothing much can be done. I really felt that was a great teaching. It is very important to think about impermanence. He reminds me I’m eighty years old. That’s wonderful. But, my friend, you are even older than me.”
“Are you showing off?” the Archbishop said.
“My own kitchen made this,” the Dalai Lama said as he offered a piece of bread to his honored guest.
“You put your fingers on the bread and think I should eat it?” Archbishop responded. “I like this one,” Archbishop Tutu said, passing over the multigrain for the white bread, glancing over at his American doctor with a smile.
“The media at the airport said, ‘You must be very happy to have Archbishop Tutu visiting,’” the Dalai Lama said. “I told them, ‘Yes, indeed, I am very happy. I am receiving one of my very good friends. Firstly, on the human level, he is a very good human being. Secondly, he is a religious leader, a serious practitioner who respects different religious traditions. Then thirdly, and most importantly, he is my very, very close friend.’”
“You are just flattering me.”
“So then I told them that you often used to describe me as a mischievous person and so I said I also consider you a mischievous person. The meeting of two mischievous people is wonderful. So, very happy reunion.” They both laughed.
Now the Archbishop crossed himself and said a prayer before eating his bread.
“Is it okay? Temperature is okay?” the Dalai Lama asked. It did not matter that he was a great spiritual leader, the former head of the Tibetan nation, and the reincarnation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion to the devout; at this moment, he was the host, and he was concerned with whether his guests were happy with the meal.
“Thank you very much,” the Archbishop said. “Thank you for welcoming us and thank you for the lunch and thank you for putting all those people along the road to welcome us.” He laughed. “The soup is delicious.”
I have never seen Archbishop Tutu miss an opportunity to thank someone or appreciate what he has been given. He will often stop an entire production or an event to acknowledge all that are present.
“This soup is beautiful,” the Archbishop said, fending off the monks who were trying to serve him more food. Everyone else was almost through with their meals, and he was still sipping his soup. “It’s lovely. Please, please, this is all I’m going to have. I’m going later on to the dessert—I mean—the fruit salad.” Then seeing that ice cream was now being offered, he laughed. “Yes, okay, maybe a little ice cream.” He was swaying his head from side to side, balancing his health on the one side and his sweet tooth on the other. The Archbishop is a big fan of ice cream, especially rum raisin, and when he stayed with Rachel and me, his office kindly told us his food preferences: chicken instead of fish, rum and Coke—now given up for those pesky health reasons—and rum raisin ice cream. Rum raisin ice cream was not an easy flavor to find outside of the holidays, but we finally found a gallon container in the deep freezer of an ice cream warehouse. The Archbishop had three well-enjoyed bites for one dessert, and we ate the rest of the gallon for months.
• • •
The conversation transitioned to the topics of bringing together their two religious traditions, the great challenge of religious conflict, and the need for tolerance. The Dalai Lama began by saying it’s not possible for everyone to be a Christian or a Buddhist. “There’s no other choice but for followers of the world’s religions to accept the reality of other faiths. We have to live together. In order to live happily, we must respect each other’s traditions. I really admire other traditions.”
“Kofi Annan, when he was in his last year, set up a commission,” the Archbishop added. “They called it the High Level Panel, a rather pompous title. We were from all traditions, and despite our diversity, we produced a unanimous report. We concluded, ‘There is nothing wrong with faiths. The problem is the faithful.’”
“That’s true, that’s true,” the Dalai Lama agreed.
I asked what we must do about intolerance and fanaticism, which was flaring all around the world.
“Education and wider contact are really the only solutions,” the Dalai Lama replied. “I have gone to make pilgrimages to holy sites all over the world—such as Fátima in Portugal, the Wailing Wall and Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. One time I was in Barcelona, Spain, and I met a Christian monk who had spent five years in the mountains living as a hermit—with very few hot meals. I asked him what his practice was, and he said the practice of love. When he answered, there was something very special in his eyes. This is really the practice at the core of all the world’s religions—love. I didn’t think to myself when I met this holy man: ‘Unfortunately he’s not a Buddhist,’ or ‘It’s too bad he’s a Christian.’”
“I often say to people, ‘Do you really think that . . .’” the Archbishop began. But the Dalai Lama had turned to one of the monks who was serving food. The Archbishop pretended to scold him: “Are you listening?”
The Dalai Lama, who had missed the Archbishop’s comment, launched in with, “So, that shows, really . . .”
The Archbishop continued to pretend that he was offended. “You see? He’s not listening.”
“Unless you use the stick, I will not listen,” the Dalai Lama said, laughing.
“But I thought you were nonviolent!”
“Now, please, you speak more. I should concentrate on eating. This is my last meal of the day.” In the Buddhist monastic tradition, the Dalai Lama eats only two meals a day, breakfast and lunch.
“Okay. As I was saying, do you really think that when—I didn’t say if; I said when—the Dalai Lama arrives in heaven, that God will say, ‘Oh, Dalai Lama, you’ve been so wonderful. What a pity you are not a Christian. You’ll have to go to the warmer place.’ Everybody sees just how entirely ridiculous it is.” The Archbishop paused and then, in a very intimate moment of friendship said, “I think one of the best things that ever happened to me was meeting you.”
The Dalai Lama smiled and then started to tell another story.
“I thought you were going to try to eat!” the Archbishop said.
The Dalai Lama chortled and went back to his dessert.
“Yes, but you have been a wonderful influence in the world,” the Archbishop continued. “There are many, many people that you have helped to become good people, and people of different religions, people of different faiths. They can see, they can sense—because I don’t think it is what you say, although, yes, what you say is okay . . . sort of acceptable. Scientists also think you are clever, but it is really who you are. I think everywhere in the world you go, people are aware that you are authentic. You’re not putting it on. You live what you teach, and you have helped very, very, very many people recover a belief in their faiths, a belief also in goodness. You are popular not just with old people but also with young people. I’ve said that you and Nelson Mandela are the only people that I can think of who are not pop stars and who could fill Central Park as you do. I mean when people know that you are going to come and speak, they come in droves. So the thing we say, about our world being a secular world and all of that, is only partly true.”
The Dalai Lama waved his hands, dismissing his rank or specialness. “I always consider myself personally one of the seven billion human beings. Nothing special. So, on that level, I have tried to make people aware that the ultimate source of happiness is simply a healthy body and a warm heart.”
As he spoke, I wondered, why this is so difficult for us to believe and to act on? It should be obvious that we are the same, but often we feel separate. There is so much isolation and alienation. Certainly I had grown up feeling this way in New York City, which at the time was the most populated place in the world.
“Everybody wants a happy life—and our individual happy life depends on a happy humanity. So we have to think about humanity, discover a sense of oneness of all seven billion human beings.
“Tea or coffee?” the Dalai Lama said, once again returning from the spiritual teacher to the host.
“I’ve got juice, thank you,” the Archbishop replied. “You were raised with a very special status in Tibet. You must have come to this recognition of oneness over time.”
“Yes, I have grown in my wisdom from study and experience. When I first went to Peking, now Beijing, to meet Chinese leaders, and also in 1956 when I came to India and met some Indian leaders, there was too much formality, so I felt nervous. So now, when I meet people, I do it on a human-to-human level, no need for formality. I really hate formality. When we are born, there is no formality. When we die, there is no formality. When we enter hospital, there is no formality. So formality is just artificial. It just creates additional barriers. So irrespective of our beliefs, we are all the same human beings. We all want a happy life.” I couldn’t help wondering if the Dalai Lama’s dislike of formality had to do with having spent his childhood in a gilded cage.
“Was it only when you went into exile,” I asked, “that the formality ended?”
“Yes, that’s right. So sometimes I say, Since I became a refugee, I have been liberated from the prison of formality. So I became much closer to reality. That’s much better. I often tease my Japanese friends that there is too much formality in their cultural etiquette. Sometimes when we discuss something, they always respond like this.” The Dalai Lama vigorously nodded his head. “So whether they agree or disagree, I cannot tell. The worst thing is the formal lunches. I always tease them that the meal looks like decoration, not like food. Everything is very beautiful, but very small portions! I don’t care about formality, so I ask them, more rice, more rice. Too much formality, then you are left with a very little portion, which is maybe good for a bird.” He was scooping up the last bits of dessert.
“Everybody may want to be happy,” I offered, “but the challenge is a lot of people don’t know how. You were talking about the importance of being warmhearted, but a lot of people are shy or have a hard time opening up to other people. They get scared. They’re afraid of rejection. You’ve spoken about when you approach people with trust, then it inspires trust in them as well.”
“That’s right. Genuine friendship is entirely based on trust,” the Dalai Lama explained. “If you really feel a sense of concern for the well-being of others, then trust will come. That’s the basis of friendship. We are social animals. We need friends. I think, from the time of our birth till our death, friends are very important.
“Scientists have found that we need love to survive. Our mothers show tremendous love and affection to us when we are born. Many scientists say that after birth, there are a number of weeks when the mother’s physical touch is the key factor to developing the brain properly. After birth, if the child is isolated without the mother or physical touch, it can be very harmful. This is nothing to do with religion. This is biology. We need love.”
The Dalai Lama had first heard about this research in the 1980s from the late biologist Robert Livingston, who later became his biology “tutor.” Child neurologist and neuroscientist Tallie Baram has conducted one of the more recent examples of this important field of research. She found that a mother’s caress triggers activity that improves cognition and resilience to stress in a baby’s developing brain. The mother’s touch could literally prevent the release of stress hormones that have been shown to lead to the disintegration of dendritic spines, branchlike structures on the neurons that are important to the sending and receiving of messages and the encoding of memory.
“My mother was a twin,” I said. “And she was born prematurely, at just two and half pounds, and she was in an incubator for two months without any human touch.”
“Did it affect her?” Archbishop Tutu asked.
“I think it affected her very profoundly.”
“Now they have—what do they call it?” Archbishop Tutu said. “A kangaroo pouch. My wife Leah and I are patrons of a children’s hospital in Cape Town, and one day we were visiting there, and this massive guy was carrying around the minutest baby tied to his chest so the baby could feel his heartbeat, and they said those babies have been shown to do much better.”
Mpho asked if I still had the picture of my own twin daughters just after they were born prematurely, when they were in the neonatal intensive care unit. One of our daughters had had a prolapsed cord, which was blocking her from descending through the birth canal, and her heartbeat and oxygen level were plummeting. The obstetrician, as she was trying to use a vacuum extractor on our daughter’s head, had told Rachel that she had one more push to get the baby out or they would have to do an emergency cesarean. Eliana was already in the birth canal, so a cesarean was no guarantee of a safe delivery.
As a doctor, Rachel knew, as I did, that every second counted, as Eliana’s oxygen level was getting dangerously low. I’ve never witnessed anything like the strength Rachel had exhibited as she threw herself headlong into the pain and wrenched every ounce of maternal will from her body to push our daughter out. Eliana was born blue, unresponsive, and not breathing. Her Apgar score was one—out of ten—which meant she was barely alive.
She was rushed to the crash cart, where the doctors tried to revive her, and told Rachel to speak to her baby, the voice of the mother having an almost magical healing effect, even in the high-risk operating room. We waited for the longest moments of our lives as the doctors tried to bring her around, preparing to intubate her. And then, in a moment of unspeakable joy and relief, Eliana sputtered, took her first breath, and began to cry with life. The rest of us, including the obstetrician, were weeping tears of joy.
After Eliana’s traumatic birth, the twins were taken to the neonatal intensive care unit at the hospital. When I walked in shortly after, they were lying side by side, holding hands.
The importance of love for our survival, which the Dalai Lama was describing, was not abstract to me, having witnessed the mother love that saved our daughter’s life and that allows us all to survive. “Oh, lovely,” the Archbishop said, imagining the image.
“It’s biology,” said the Dalai Lama. “All mammals, including humans, have a special bond with their mother. Without the mother’s care, the youngster will die. That’s a fact.”
“Even if they don’t die, they can grow into a Hitler because they have this huge sense of lack,” the Archbishop said.
“I think when Hitler was very young,” the Dalai Lama countered, “he also was the same as the other children.” This was the first time they disagreed in more than mischievous play. “I think his mother showed affection to him, or he would have died.” Family members recount that Klara Hitler was indeed a devoted mother, although Hitler’s father apparently was allegedly abusive. “So,” the Dalai Lama continued, “even today these terrorists also received maximum affection from their mothers. So even these terrorists, deep inside . . .”
“I think I have to take issue with you on that,” the Archbishop responded. “The people who go around becoming bullies are people who have a massive sense of insecurity, who want to prove that they are somebody, often because they did not get enough love.”
“I think, yes, circumstances, environment, education all matter,” the Dalai Lama replied. “Especially today; there is not much focus on inner values in education. Then, instead of inner values, we become self-centered—always thinking: I, I, I. A self-centered attitude brings a sense of insecurity and fear. Distrust. Too much fear brings frustration. Too much frustration brings anger. So that’s the psychology, the system of mind, of emotion, which creates a chain reaction. With a self-centered attitude, you become distanced from others, then distrust, then feel insecure, then fear, then anxiety, then frustration, then anger, then violence.”
It was fascinating to hear the Dalai Lama describe the process of mind that leads to fear, alienation, and ultimately to violence. I pointed out that so often our parenting in the West is too focused on our children, and their needs alone, rather than helping them to learn to care for others. The Dalai Lama responded, “Yes, there is too much self-centeredness also among parents—‘my children, my children.’ That’s biased love. We need unbiased love toward entire humanity, entire sentient beings, irrespective of what their attitude is toward us. So your enemies are still human brothers and sisters, so they also deserve our love, our respect, our affection. That’s unbiased love. You might have to resist your enemies’ actions, but you can love them as brothers and sisters. Only we human beings can do this with our human intelligence. Other animals cannot do this.”
Having known the fierce and focused love of parenthood, I wondered if it was truly possible to love others with that same love. Could we really extend that circle of care to many others and not just our own family? A monastic could focus all their love on humanity, but a parent has a child to raise. I imagined that what the Dalai Lama was saying might be an aspiration for humanity, but was it a realistic one? Perhaps we would not be able to love other children as much as we love our own, but maybe we could extend that love beyond its typical boundaries. I wondered what the Archbishop, who was also a father, might say, but by now everyone had finished lunch.
We would return to the elasticity of love and compassion later in the week, but tomorrow we would begin discussing the obstacles to joy, from stress and anxiety to adversity and illness, and how we might be able to experience joy even in the face of these inevitable challenges.