"Westerners Are Too Self-Absorbed"

The Daily Telegraphy, London -- 01 April 2006

By Alice Thomson

Tsering Wangmo is shaking uncontrollably as tears pour down her cheeks. Still sobbing, she pulls up her top and slowly turns around to show me a fretwork of scars. They criss-cross her body from shoulders to waist.

"My crime," she explains when she is calmer, "was to be found by the police with a picture of the Dalai Lama. I was dragged through the streets of Lhasa by my hair, beaten with electric prongs, then thrown into jail for three years."

"Whoever shows you greatest kindness, they are your family."

Her waterlogged, open-air prison in Tibet was shared with around 1,000 other women. "We were tortured, raped, hung upside down for hours," she says. "Many died." On her release, she discovered that her husband had been forced to marry a Chinese woman, so she took her children and fled barefoot across the Himalayas to find solace with the Dalai Lama.

She is one of thousands of Tibetans who have made the trek to Dharmsala, an old British hill station in northern India, to seek safety with their exiled leader.

Here, they are joined by hundreds of Westerners who come, clutching their Lonely Planet guides, for a glimpse of their guru. While Tsering turns her prayer-wheel in the refugee centre, a rotund Austrian biscuit heiress called Heidi Gudrun is staying in a deluxe suite at one of the new hotels that has sprung up nearby to cater for well-heeled travellers.

Heidi seems just as miserable as Tsering - but for a vastly different reason. "For 15 years, I have tried to lose weight," she says. "I have lost two husbands, I have had my stomach stapled - the Dalai Lama is my last hope."

It is the peculiar fate of this Dalai Lama that he serves as a guru for overweight biscuit heiresses as well as a living god to 10 million Tibetan Buddhists.

His status as a deity dates back to when he was two. The monks who found him playing in a farmyard in north-eastern Tibet brought him to the capital of Lhasa, where he was pronounced the 14th reincarnation of Buddha after correctly pointing to his predecessor's drinking bowl and false teeth in the Potala Palace.

Forty-eight years have now elapsed since he was forced to flee Lhasa for the safety of India.

During that period, more than a million Tibetans have been killed by the Chinese because of their refusal to stop worshipping the Lord of Compassion, and more than 5,000 temples have been destroyed. Tibetans who shout his name in the marketplaces risk having their tongues ripped out.

In the West, the 70-year-old Dalai Lama can fill Wembley faster than Coldplay. There are films about his life, his image is on yoga mats and he has guest-edited French Vogue. His books on how to achieve happiness have topped the New York Times bestseller list.

Teaching the virtues of compassion, kindness and tolerance to both East and West must make for a complicated, exhausting life.

At 8am, as I walk past the yak-tea stalls to his bungalow - the Heavenly Abode - people are already queueing in the drizzle to catch a glimpse of his Holiness. The Dalai Lama has been awake since 3.30am, praying and ordaining monks in the temple.

My first glimpse of the living god comes as a short, squat man runs through the rain from his garden into his sitting-room, his maroon robes flapping behind him. The broad face, set into permanent laughter-lines, is unmistakable. He is chuckling.

The white-painted room contains a man-sized bronze Buddha and a sofa and two armchairs that look as if they might have come from John Lewis's furniture department.

After I have offered the Dalai Lama the traditional kurta (a white scarf to bless), he throws himself into one of the chairs and stretches out his feet.

"At least monks don't need hair-dryers," he says, chortling. His readiness to break into laughter is his most striking characteristic: his laugh is uncontainable and uncontrollable, ricocheting around the room even when he is discussing atrocities.

"What shall we talk about today?" he asks, rubbing his hands together as I tell him about my meetings with Tsering and Heidi. He chooses to discuss the West before Tibet.

"It is fascinating," he says, speaking in slightly stilted English. "In the West, you have bigger homes, yet smaller families; you have endless conveniences - yet you never seem to have any time. You can travel anywhere in the world, yet you don't bother to cross the road to meet your neighbours; you have more food than you could possibly eat, yet that makes women like Heidi miserable."

The West's big problem, he believes, is that people have become too self-absorbed. "I don't think people have become more selfish, but their lives have become easier and that has spoilt them. They have less resilience, they expect more, they constantly compare themselves to others and they have too much choice - which brings no real freedom."

He has lived as a monk since childhood, but the Dalai Lama views marriage as one of the chief ways of finding happiness. "Too many people in the West have given up on marriage. They don't understand that it is about developing a mutual admiration of someone, a deep respect and trust and awareness of another human's needs," he says. "The new easy-come, easy-go relationships give us more freedom - but less contentment."

Although he is known for his tolerant, humane views, he is a surprisingly harsh critic of homosexuality. If you are a Buddhist, he says, it is wrong. "Full stop."

No way round it.

"A gay couple came to see me, seeking my support and blessing. I had to explain our teachings. Another lady introduced another woman as her wife - astonishing. It is the same with a husband and wife using certain sexual practices. Using the other two holes is wrong."

At this point, he looks across at his interpreter - who seems mainly redundant - to check that he has been using the right English words to discuss this delicate matter. The interpreter gives a barely perceptible nod.

"A Western friend asked me what harm could there be between consenting adults having oral sex, if they enjoyed it," the Dalai Lama continues, warming to his theme. "But the purpose of sex is reproduction, according to Buddhism. The other holes don't create life. I don't mind - but I can't condone this way of life."

He laughs when I change the subject and talk about the West's attempts to become more spiritual through yoga, massage and acupuncture. "These are just physical activities," he says. "To be happier, you must spend less time plotting your life and be more accepting."

The Dalai Lama has been criticised for becoming too obsessed with the fripperies of the West: he is too much in awe of celebrities, say his detractors, and too keen to appear in glossy magazines -- he has even been pictured in Hello!, alongside the Duchess of York.

"Some say I am a good person, some say I am a charlatan -- I am just a monk," he says, smiling broadly. "I never asked people like Richard Gere to come, but it is foolish to stop them. I have Tibetans, Indians, backpackers, Aids patients, religious people, politicians, actors and princesses. My attitude is to give everyone some of my time. If I can contribute in any way to their happiness, that makes me happy."

Many of the Western women who queue up to be blessed, he says, have told him they feel they can talk to him about anything.

"I see women who have had abortions because they thought a child would ruin their lives. A baby seemed unbearable - yet now they are older, they are unable to conceive. I feel so sorry for them."

They need to discover an inner strength, he tells them. "The West is now quite weak - it can't cope with adversity and it has little compassion for others. People are like plants - they can develop ways of countering negative forces. If people took more responsibility for their own problems, they would become more self-confident."

He does not believe that you have to be religious in order to have a meaningful life. "But you have to have morals, to strive for basic, good human qualities. I don't want to convert people to Buddhism - all major religions, when understood properly, have the same potential for good."

Yet while he has been sitting in his bungalow in the Himalayas, religion has turned ugly, with fanatics stirring up hatred, "Fundamentalism is terrifying because it is based purely on emotion, rather than intelligence. It prevents followers from thinking as individuals and about the good of the world," he says.

An avid listener of the BBC World Service (as well as of many soaps), he was horrified to hear about Britain's "home-grown" suicide bombers. "In any country or society, there will be rich, poor, different races, different religions - but this is all secondary. Your country should be your common ground.

"This new terrorism has been brewing for many years. Much of it is caused by jealousy and frustration at the West because it looks so highly developed and successful on television. Leaders in the East use religion to counter that, to bind these countries together."

Terrorists, he warns, must be treated humanely. "Otherwise, the problem will escalate. If there is one Bin Laden killed today, soon there will be 10 Bin Ladens. Awesome. Ten Bin Ladens killed, the hatred is spread; 100 bombed, and 1,000 lose members of their families."

So does he think the war in Iraq was wrong?

"The method was very violent. Violence is always unpredictable -- it can produce a lot of problems," says the Dalai Lama, whose religion forbids him from killing so much as a mosquito. It is pointless pressing him further: despite his outward simplicity, he has considerable diplomatic skills when it comes to issues that are best not confronted head-on by an exile who relies on the world to protect him from the Chinese.

Recently, I tell him, Tony Blair said that God would judge him on his decision to go to war with Iraq. The Dalai Lama snorts and swings his Dr Martens-clad feet in amusement. "Surely, history will judge. Buddha was always against violence, but I don't know about God."

Mr Blair's pronouncement seems to fascinate him, and he teases away at the subject: "During the Second World War, Churchill prayed. That's fine. But God should be above politics and political decision-making -- he is like the Queen."

This is a typical pronouncement: oblique, mischievous, yet leaving you in no doubt that he does not fully approve of Mr Blair dragging the Almighty into global politics.

The Dalai Lama is no innocent when it comes to realpolitik: he regularly chats to Nelson Mandela, debates ethical issues with the Pope, and knows many world leaders personally through his attempts to highlight the Tibetan cause. Although he appears not to approve of the war in Iraq, he nevertheless admires President Bush.

"He is very straightforward," says the Dalai Lama - and it's clear that this is high praise indeed. "On our first visit, I was faced with a large plate of biscuits. President Bush immediately offered me his favourites, and after that, we got on fine. On my next visit, he didn't mind when I was blunt about the war. By my third visit, I was ushering him into the Oval Office. I was astonished by his grasp of Buddhism."

On Mr Blair, the Dalai Lama is less forthcoming. When I ask what he thinks of the Prime Minister, he replies: "He smiles a lot." Oddly, this doesn't come out sounding like a compliment, and he refuses to elaborate, ducking expertly into another subject. Now, John Major - he'd like to meet him, he says. "I saw him on television - he looks rather gentle."

The Dalai Lama believes that the British should look to the Archbishop of Canterbury, whom he admires, for spiritual and moral guidance.

But the Church of England, I say, seems tied up in the tortuous question of whether it should accept homosexual priests. And when the Archbishop visited Darfur, he did not exactly dwell on the subject of genocide; nor have Western leaders in general.

"Sometimes," says the Dalai Lama, "situations are unbearable -- it is easier for the world to turn a blind eye."

But wasn't he angry when the West refused to do anything while Tibetans were being slaughtered by the Chinese? "We need to prevent these genocides happening in the first place. In Africa, it is due to many factors: local leaders are obsessed with guns, and weapons are encouraged by the West. Education should be pushed instead. Hunger and drought also cause problems. These countries have become independent only in the last few decades -- they are still learning. Religious leaders need to show them the way."

He is curiously reticent about discussing Tibet, insisting that he doesn't want to focus on his own problems. "Some nomads still have a very low standard of life," he says finally. "There are more cars, better medical facilities and schools - but you only benefit if you are Chinese."

I keep thinking of Tsering and what she has been through. And surely the Dalai Lama must feel guilty that so many are suffering in his name while he flies around the world, meeting the great and the good.

"Buddhists are taught that if there is something you can do about a situation, you must do it immediately. But if there is nothing you can do, you can't worry - that is indulgent."

Anger, he says, is definitely not the answer. "Anger prevents you making good decisions. I need to remain calm and stable. It happened -- I am sorry. I will be here for her [Tsering], but it is her religion that will give her the strength to continue."

Nor does he feel he should have stayed in Tibet to protest with his people. "In Tibet, I would have been a prisoner, a puppet leader. But it doesn't mean I ever forget about Tibet. I never stop thinking about it, and I tell the refugees that if they can, they must return one day or the Chinese will have won."

He has written dozens of books on happiness -- but can exiles ever be happy? "I was happiest in my childhood when my mother smiled, or my teacher let me off lessons. But as an adult, life without challenges is meaningless. Now, I feel happy because my flowers are growing in this rain even though I know that, at the same time, my country is facing elimination."

I ask if his tours and books have made him rich. "Everyone thinks I am. Even my friends. But the money goes to the Tibetan cause [for refugees, such as Tsering]. I get 25 rupees [about 32p] a day from the Indian government. My senior officials get 75. We don't get fat."

Like all Tibetan monks, he eats an early breakfast, then lunch and no supper. "My younger brother, who lives with me, teases me and says I rise so early only to get to the table first because I am so greedy. I eat what I am offered. It's the pig diet - a little bit of everything: porridge, meat, Tibetan dumplings, vegetables.

"That is what your girl Heidi should do. No faddy diets. It is a waste of life to be always thinking about the next meal if you don't have to."

The Dalai Lama's way of life is frugal - but not punishing. He doesn't have to squash into economy seats when he takes off on his global tours, for example. "If I fly abroad, I fly business class - or my robes engulf everyone," he explains. "But first class is an outrageous luxury."

His only other indulgence is watchstraps. "I love them. My glasses, my shoes, my robes are always the same. The watchstrap, I change - I collect them."

But he would hate to own anything else. "It is too exhausting. After a recent earthquake, my bungalow needed rebuilding. I said I could spend 20 lakhs [about £25,800], but soon the bills were going up. Just the foundations cost 30 lakhs. I finally said: 'Enough. I will live in half a house.' It made me understand your Western frustrations."

Nor does he mind that he has never married. "When I was young, inside the Potala Palace, it was almost like a prison with my tutor. I used to wish I could be like the food sellers below my window. If I hadn't been chosen, I might have become an engineer. I love mechanics. I might have stayed on the farm and married my neighbour. We would both be old now.

"But it wouldn't be an easier life. I would be worrying about dying before her, leaving her alone, about my children. In some ways, being a monk is simpler."

Not just a monk but a living god. Does he worry about the hardships that will face his next reincarnation, who will have to stand up to the Chinese while still a child? "If I die today, the lamas are already discussing the 15th Dalai Lama. I hope he returns to Tibet, even if I can't.

"But the Tibetans always say: wherever you feel most comfortable, that is your home. Whoever shows you greatest kindness and comfort, they are your family. So I am happy to die in India."