The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama

Knopf, March 2008

Author and journalist Pico Iyer was seventeen and on a trip to India with his father when he first met the Dalai Lama. Determined not to show any interest in Dad's "colleague," Iyer recalls only that the man in red and saffron robes referred to him as bodhichitta ("a good heart infused with wisom") and that clouds swirled in and out of the room high on the mountaintop in Dharamsala.

The meeting however was pivotal, portending the ensuing relationship that is the starting point for The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.

When a monk comes out in front of the swarming cameras, how much do we see the monk, and how much only what the cameras construct?

The monk in question is Tenzin Gyatso, who became Tibet's fourteenth Dalai Lama in 1950, at the age of fifteen.

His tenure as Dalai Lama would be unlike any who preceded him. The year before, China had invaded Tibet, beginning an occupation during which, according to Iyer, more than a million Tibetans died of starvation or in violent encounters with the Chinese. In 1959, along with other government officials, the Dalai Lama fled to Dharamsala, India where he established the Tibetan Government in Exile.

Having visited Dharamsala numerous times, Iyer transports his readers to the home of Tibet's government in exile - "Tibet 2.0" - where pilgrims, Tibetan and foreign alike, daily walk the Lingkor, the mile-long path around the hill upon which their spiritual leader lives, praying for his good health and long life.

There, Iyer engages Tibetan leaders and monks in discussion about Tibet's plight and their leader's nonviolent stance. The Dalai Lama's designation as both the spiritual and political leader of the Tibetan people, places him in a difficult situation with regard to the Chinese choke-hold that threatens to extinguish what remains of Tibetan culture.

Aware of this difficulty, the Dalai Lama has endeavored to place more political power in his people, encouraging them to govern themselves in a democratic fashion - "You should carry your work as if I didn't exist, because that day will come, definitely."

Yes, the Dalai Lama is regarded by Tibetans as a god, but he is their temporal leader as well, and their yearning for freedom from Chinese oppression lays most squarely on his shoulders. Since he first began to speak outside of India, China, and Tibet in 1967, the Dalai Lama's message has evolved from one focused on the plight of his people to a more general discussion of global ethics. He still meets with world leaders for his political discussions, but the rock star status he maintains around the world as a head of state and a spiritual luminary comes not from those talks but from his stadium-sized public speeches.

Iyer casts the Dalai Lama as a "doctor of the soul," whose specialty is the healing of ignorance and its resultant suffering. Though said to be an incarnation of Chenrezig, a Buddhist deity of compassion, the Dalai Lama is vehemently opposed to being dubbed a "living Buddha." He calls himself a teacher, a guru. He is self-deprecating in his words and manner, consistently qualifying his speech with such phrases as "I think" or "perhaps," always conscious of emphasizing that his thoughts are just that - his thoughts, rather than any sort of absolute truth. When speaking about his Buddhist practice, the Dalai Lama focuses on the work that is meditation rather than its perceived "mystical gifts." In speeches worldwide, he implores people not to convert to Buddhism, but instead to explore their own spiritual traditions to the fullest.

Pico Iyer is an author with proven interest and capability on the topic of globalism that parallels his subject's in The Open Road. His has been an enduring relationship with the Dalai Lama, and this portrait of the Tibetan Leader is intimate and delightful. Through the author's eyes we see many aspects of a multifaceted figure - private and public, monk and politician. Iyer also sheds light on Tibetan culture and history - from its folkloric roots as the love child of a Bodhisattva and a demoness to the suffering and the "cultural genocide" Tibetans endure under Chinese rule today. As the approaching Summer Olympics in Beijing turn the world's attention once more towards Tibet, I can suggest no better recommended reading than The Open Road.