(Los Angeles Time, October 13, 1999)

His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, says he's just a simple monk

By Teresa Watanabe

LOS ANGELES -- His smiling visage appears as computer screen savers. His lectures sell out within minutes. His books have just made American publishing history when for the first time a religious leader landed two tomes on national best-seller lists at the same time.

His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, perennially describes himself as just a "simple Buddhist monk." But as he travels the world amid the fanfare of a rock star and with security worthy of the highest heads of state, the question arises: Why does a Buddhist monk from an obscure place on the roof of the world command such global respect and admiration?

Here's one thought from Bryan Borys, a University of Southern California public administration professor: Borys finds the man fascinating.

"I think he's the closest thing to a hero that anyone has around here nowadays," said Borys, who has never practiced Buddhism -- he was raised a Catholic. "We have a real hard time finding people we can look up to. The Dalai Lama is motivated by kindness and love, whereas a lot of people on the religious right seem motivated by meanness."

The Dalai Lama's broad appeal hardly seems more complex than that. He seems caring, people say. He seems genuine. He lives simply, wearing a maroon and saffron robe every day. (His one apparent luxury, a Rolex watch, was a gift from President Franklin Roosevelt.) He seems to practice what he preaches, the rare leader who has managed to stay untarnished by any whiff of scandal.

And he's humble. Despite his stature in today's relentless celebrity culture -- and his coterie of Hollywood supporters from Richard Gere to Goldie Hawn -- the Dalai Lama firmly resists efforts to idolize him. He consistently declares he possesses no supernatural powers despite widespread legends of the metaphysical gifts of Tibetan masters.

Carolyn Hengst, who co-organized a recent appearance by the Dalai Lama in Los Angeles, and other students of Tibetan Buddhism say the Dalai Lama's appeal is rooted in far more than "fortune cookie Buddhism," as one national newspaper put it last year in describing his aphorisms to be happy and caring.

The Dalai Lama, followers say, draws from a deep well of intense daily Buddhist practice -- nearly six hours of chanting, meditation and visualization, despite his hectic schedule of lectures, teach-ins, travel, study and dealing with the endless line of people who want to meet him. His luminous presence also reflects, in their belief, the karma of past incarnations and his current one as the 14th manifestation of the Buddha of compassion.

But the Dalai Lama reaches well outside the Tibetan Buddhist community. Steeped in decades of rigorous academic training and the finely honed art of dialectic debate, the Dalai Lama offers thoughts on politics, economics, medicine and the media.

The Dalai Lama also has actively built ties with other faith communities. In the past decade, the Dalai Lama has met frequently with Jewish scholars and rabbis to tap the secret of their success in holding together a people in exile. The Dalai Lama fled Chinese-occupied Tibet in 1959, and is one of more than 120,000 Tibetans in exile today.

"It's not hard to see Tibet and China and think about the Hebrews and Egypt," said Rodger Kamenetz, author of The Jew in the Lotus, a 1994 best-selling account of an extended dialogue between the Dalai Lama and Jewish rabbis and scholars. Kamenetz and others have told the Dalai Lama that preservation of memory is critical in exile.