Deep Set Eyes

Who is the Dalai Lama?

There are up to 100,000 people expected to attend events with the Dalai Lama in Washington, D.C., over the next ten days. If you were to ask each of them, “Who is the Dalai Lama?” you will likely receive different response from every individual. Most certainly deep respect and veneration would be expressed. The Dalai Lama describes himself as “a simple Buddhist monk,” while in Beijing, the Chinese government regularly vilifies him as “a wolf in monk’s robes.” The Dalai Lama strikes many different cords.

The first time I encountered the Dalai Lama was in the mid 1990s when I traveled by road through Nepal and rail across northern India to arrive in the small town of Dharamsala. I was on a well-trodden path by Westerners, with the likes of Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg traveling there in the early 1960s, followed by philosophers and Christian mystics such as Thomas Merton, and today by politicians, neuroscientists, molecular geneticists, and movie stars. For more than forty years, beatnik poets, renowned scientists, world leaders, and global celebrities have journeyed to Dharamsala with the same motivation as mine was—to see the XIV Dalai Lama.

When the Dalai Lama escaped a pursuing Chinese army and fled Tibet in 1959, India graciously accepted him as a guest of their country, providing him a home and a daily rupee stipend that they still honor today. Over 120,000 Tibetans journeyed on foot over the Himalayas to follow into exile their spiritual and political leader. With refugees scattered in colonies throughout the Indian subcontinent, including Nepal and Bhutan, the Dalai Lama eventually set up operations of a Tibetan government-in-exile near Dharamsala in the Himalayan foothills. More than half a century still on, the Dalai Lama continues to reside in India as a refugee, forbid by China from returning to his homeland and to live with his six million brethren who devotedly pray to him daily.

The reason I went to the hill town of Dharamsala was to attend the Dalai Lama’s teachings about compassion in action, that is, practical training to become a bodhisattva , a kind of spiritual warrior. Who better to receive such teachings from than Dalai Lama? Like so many Westerners, Chinese, and people from all around the globe, I wanted to learn from a most noble, honest, and wise individual—a rarity in today’s world.

On the morning on the first day of teachings, after the crowd of a few thousand Tibetan refugees and a couple hundred foreigners had squeezed into a large courtyard by Namgyal Monastery, a breeze of silence blew as we saw the Dalai Lama leave his residence a short distance away. Indian security guards with automatic rifles and monks carrying incense walked shoulder to shoulder clearing a path through the crowd as we were told to stay seated. Thousands of Tibetans’ eyes spontaneously filled with tears upon seeing their leader, hands devotedly folded at their chests, placing the hope and aspiration of a nation onto his shoulders.

Artist Profile: Frida Kahlo, on her 104th Birthday – Paperblanks Blog

From an early age Kahlo suffered from health problems. Contracting polio at just six years of age caused her right leg to appear much thinner than the other.  A traffic accident in her teens led her to leave behind her study of medicine and begin painting. During her recovery her self-portraits played a key role in her development as an artist.  Of her 200 paintings, 55 are self-portraits which often incorporate symbolic portrayals of physical and psychological wounds. She insisted, “ I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality .”