The following will be a quote from "The Wisdom of Compassion" by the Dalai Lama and Victor Chan. I wanted to share this with you around the world because it reminds me of many stories I have heard of people around my age who first met the Dalai Lama in the 1960s and 1970s from all around the world. They were usually well educated people from middle class to upper class backgrounds from around the world. And they were usually explorers of the world, themselves and new cultures.
Begin quote from page 3 of "The Wisdom of Compassion" a book by the Dalai Lama and Victor Chan.
"I met the Dalai Lama for the first time in 1972. The meeting came about because of an unexpected incident. I had been kidnapped earlier that year in Kabul, Afghanistan.
After finishing college in Canada, I had bought a used VW camper in Utrecht, painted it a psychedelic purple, and driven it overland to Afghanistan. In a backpacker hotel in Kabul, I met Cheryl Crosby, a thirtysomething New Yorker. We were drinking tea in a chai shop with Rita, a young German traveler, when three Afghan men abducted us at gunpoint. In the dead of winter and in pitch darkness we were driven to Paghman, the summer resort of Afghan kings high up in the Hindu Kush. By a stroke of good luck, we managed to escape three days later, when, as the kidnappers were driving us out of the small village their beat-up Datsun flipped on the snowy switchbacks. We scrambled out of the car, ran down the mountain, and managed to hitch a ride back to Kabul in a truck.
After this harrowing experience, Cheryl and I decided to travel together to India. It turned out that she had a letter of introduction to the Dalai Lama through her connections in New York. It was during the festivities of Holi in March 1972 (we got out of the bus in Dharamsala and were promptly pelted with little balloons filled with colored water) that we were granted an audience in the Tibetan leader's home.
Several things about that encounter still stand out for me, I vividly remember that the Dalai Lama had a hard time suppressing his giggles whenever he looked my way. My hair was down to the small of my back and unkempt; I was dressed all in black: embroidered shirt, threadbare velvet pants, and an ankle length flowing Moroccan cape. The Dalai Lama's English was poor at the time and his secretary translated the exchange between him and Cheryl. I only managed to blurt out one question: "Do you hate the Chinese?" He straightened in his chair and spoke forcefully in English for the first time, "No. I do not hate the Chinese" Then his secretary translated, "His Holiness considers the Chinese his brothers and sisters."
The second time I met the Dalai lama was in London, twenty-2 years later in 1994. I presented him with a copy of the nearly published "Tibet Handbook", a 1,100 page guide to the pilgrimage places in Tibet, which I had spent nearly 10 years researching and writing.
I met the Tibetan leader for the third time in 1999 in Indiana.
He walked along onto the stage in the Indianapolis stadium. He was bent low, almost double, as he walked to the center. One palm was raised face level and vertical to the floor in a traditional Buddhist greeting. He bowed to the audience, first left, then right, then straight ahead. Forty-Five hundred people applauded loudly. He would give a talk here before moving on to Bloomington to preside over the Kalachakra Empowerment, an eleven day Buddhist ritual to enhance world peace.
end quote ending on page 5 of the Wisdom of Compassion.
For many of us who came of age in the 1960s and1970s especially and for all successive generations as well, the Dalai Lama embodies "Compassion" which for educated people often appears as the most useful path no matter whether you believe in God or not. Compassion is the essence of everything good about humans and human civilization. So, knowing that someone like the Dalai Lama still exists on Earth even today is very comforting.
Note: I wasn't sure where Utrecht was so I looked it up on google maps. It is actually in Holland. So, this means he bought a VW Van in Holland and then drove it overland to Afghanistan which is quite a feat in itself because of those times. Just surviving something like that as a westerner is surprising in some ways.
In 1985 I drove from Kathmandu to the Indian Border in Rented Car. Being from California the driving problems were the exact opposite of what I found in California. For example, roads were only 1 lane paved affairs. This meant that people always played Chicken which meant that the largest vehicle usually won and forced the oncoming traffic off the road. However, sometimes trucks of equal size crashed into each other playing chicken and then people died. After driving some from Kathmandu to India I gave the car back to our driver as I didn't like playing chicken while driving and driving almost always is slower than 25 miles per hour because you are sharing the road with vehicles that look a lot like rototillers towing wagons at 10 mph or under and water buffalo or Dzos which are a combination of water buffalo and Tibetan Yaks. So, the fastest you will go (for a few moments then was 25 mph and the slowest was stopping for cattle moving down the road and stopping to graze here and there. And this was 1985.
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