(Newsweek, August 16, 1999)

A Lama to The Globe. The Dalai Lama looks beyond Tibet, and meditates on his reincarnation as an ambassador of Buddhism.

By Kenneth L. Woodward

In a small yellow temple off a rutted mountain road in northern India, a simple image of the Buddha gazes north, over the Himalayas, toward Tibet. It is dawn and across the courtyard of what was once a British colonial cantonment, the Dalai Lama is meditating on his eventual death and passage to rebirth. The entire compound-the temple, the concrete monastery for 200 monks and the Dalai Lama's matching yellow bungalow called The Heavenly Abode-has the provisional look of a summer camp at the end of the season. For 40 years Upper Dharmsala has been the seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile. But if the Chinese government would let him, the Dalai Lama would dissolve his "Little Lhasa" like a mandala made of sand, and return to Tibet tomorrow.

To Buddhists, of course, life itself is inherently impermanent: a brief karmic interlude between successive rebirths from which they seek final liberation. But for Tenzin Gyatso, liberation has also come to include freedom in this life from his political role as the 14th Dalai Lama. "I am already 64, have active life of maybe 15 more years," he observes in his clear but choppy English. "After that, too old. My name, my popularity are useful in other fields, like promotion of human values and of harmony among world religions. It is wise that my energy should be devoted to these things rather than remain Dalai Lama."

Indeed, 10 years after he won the Nobel Prize for Peace, Tenzin Gyatso has become unofficial lama to the world. His is the face that Buddhism wears, especially in the West. With his influence stretching far beyond his 6 million Tibetan followers, the Dalai Lama is devoting his last years to a larger community. So far in 1999 he's made pilgrimages to the holy places in Jerusalem and to major cities like London to spread the wisdom of the Buddha. This week, he will teach Buddhist meditation to sold-out crowds in New York City and give a free public lecture in the East Meadow of Central Park. One of his three dozen books, "The Art of Happiness," has been on The New York Times best-seller list for 29 weeks and his latest, "Ethics for the New Millennium," will be published next week. His encompassing smile, his devouring laugh, his engaging humility and nonjudgmental manner have made the Dalai Lama the most benign and welcome figure on the stage of world religion. Now he says he wants to address all of the world'

s ills directly, out of his personal knowledge and experience.

But would anyone heed the words of Tenzin Gyatso if he were no longer the Dalai Lama? Can he sever his political from his religious authority? The questions make him laugh. "You see, I am just monk," he tells me, pointing to his experience with dreams. "Sometimes in dream I have violence or am meeting women. Then in dream I remember, 'I am monk.' Never in dream do I remember I am Dalai Lama. Dalai Lama not that important."

Even in his dreams, however, the Dalai Lama would never relinquish his position as head of state as long as China controls Tibet. His government-in-exile has a Constitution that calls for a democratic self-government. If China grants Tibet political and cultural autonomy, he has told Beijing, he'll order a vote on the future of the institution of the Dalai Lama as soon as he returns. Should the Tibetans choose democracy, he would immediately become citizen Gyatso, thus ending 350 years of religious rule. "I do not want to preserve the institution of the Dalai Lama," he says, "but only the Tibetan people can abolish it."

The Chinese would rather play the politics of Buddhist death and rebirth. They have already seized the recently reincarnated Panchen Lama, Tibet's second highest religious authority, and replaced him with a boy of their own choosing. The next Dalai Lama, Chinese authorities announced earlier this year, will also be born in Tibet-and therefore will be under their control. But Tenzin Gyatso has made a countermove. "If I pass away while still in exile," he says in conversation over tea in Dharmsala, "then the next Dalai Lama will appear outside Tibet and the Tibetan community will choose him as my successor. That is clear. The very purpose of the reincarnation is to fulfill the policies initiated but not accomplished in the previous Dalai Lama's life."

But the metaphysics of reincarnation is less complicated than its politics. The Chinese have mocked the Dalai Lama by suggesting that he wants to be reincarnated as a "blue-eyed Westerner." The taunt evokes one of his infectious laughs. "It is possible," he readily concedes. "Next Dalai Lama could be Indian or European or African-even a woman. Body doesn't matter."

Outside, a pious group of elderly Tibetan women is circumambulating the Dalai Lama's grounds, as if it were a stupa containing relics of Buddha himself. To them, the Dalai Lama is a buddha, the bodily emanation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, the patron deity of Tibet. For this reason alone, I suggest to him, the Tibetan people will never regard Tenzin Gyatso as just an ordinary citizen. In the world of Tibetan Buddhism, where rebirth is more feared than welcomed by the spiritually less advanced, the Dalai Lama's more-than-human identity is an irreplaceable source of spiritual hope. Almost every month, young men from Tibet risk their own lives crossing the perilous Himalayas to be with the Dalai Lama. To them, Tenzin Gyatso will always be more than just a monk.

Having multiple identities is "very complicated," he confesses, a mystery of his own previous lives that he has tried to puzzle out. The first Dalai Lama was considered the reincarnation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, the fifth the Bodhisattva of Wisdom. "In my own case, I don't know," he says. "I am a cipher. I believe the Dalai Lamas have incarnated different beings, but of the same [karmic] quality." According to Buddhist tradition, I remind him, as a bodhisattva he already possesses the spiritual ability to determine the place and time of his next rebirth. "Not yet," he replies. This very morning-like every morning of his adult life-he began the day at 3:30 meditating on his death and rebirth. "Why?" he asks. "Because I still need a lot of spiritual improvement in myself." He smiles broadly. "Monk is my core identity."

As a lama, though, he is also a teacher of Tibetan Buddhism. The pupil of 17 different gurus in his youth, he has become a concerned voice for the integrity of the dharma, or teaching. Among too many Western practitioners, he finds, meditation is divorced from the morality it is meant to support. "The very purpose of meditation," he insists, "is to discipline the mind and reduce afflictive emotions." He is aware that his nonjudgmental appearance has paradoxically turned him into a poster boy for New Age designer Buddhism-"a screen saver for computers," he has said. But in recent teachings the Dalai Lama has denounced abortion as a sin against "non-violence to all sentient beings," opposed contraception and criticized proponents of euthanasia-much as the pope has done. Although he has affirmed the dignity and rights of gays and lesbians, he has condemned homosexual acts as contrary to Buddhist ethics. Indeed, during a teaching in San Francisco in 1997, he was surprised to find himself criticized by gay Buddhi

sts.

Tenzin Gyatso always seems slightly surprised at how far his own fame has taken him. What he has yet to realize is that his 40 years in India have transformed Dharmsala itself into a mecca for seekers of every sort. "Because of Dalai Lama?" he asks. The thought disturbs his Buddhist peace of mind. To him, Dharmsala is not home, and will never be a sacred place. He is the 14th Dalai Lama, but the first to venture far from Tibet.

Increasingly, then, he sees his role as global. The Dalai Lama has been an eloquent promoter of religious understanding. He has offered a Buddhist commentary on the Gospel to Catholic monks, discussed mysticism with Hasidic scholars and urged his own monks to emulate "my Christian brothers and sisters" in transforming Buddhist compassion into concrete acts of social service. As a pilgrim, he has visited the Catholic shrine at Lourdes, the Hindu temples in the holy city of Varanasi and still hopes to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, which is closed to all non-Muslims. No other religious figure has tried so hard to fathom the popular piety of other believers. Buddhism couldn't find a more persuasive face.