By Steve Kloehn - The Chicago Tribune, July 25, 1996

To Western eyes, the Dalai Lama cuts a curious figure. He's grandpa in a monk's robe, a kindly man who wears oxfords, tinted eyeglasses and a grin that won't quit.

He is the spiritual leader of 50 million Tibetan Buddhists worldwide, revered as the 14th reincarnation of a great holy man. At the same time, he is a head of state albeit one who has to use the back door at the White House. He is a Nobel laureate and a favorite of movie actor Richard Gere.

As Chicago prepares for the Dalai Lama's visit Sunday and Monday at a conference expected to draw 500 religious and academic leaders from around the world, he has become the focus of what some Christians and Buddhists believe is a growing relationship between two of the most fundamentally different religions.

While the Dalai Lama's visit won't feature a black-tie ball, a la Princess Diana, or the preprogrammed frenzy of the Democratic National Convention in August, scholars and religious figures say that his appearance reflects a subtle yet profound shift in the world's spiritual profile.

Since World War II, mainline Christianity has turned its attention from converting people of other faiths to a search for common ground with other religions.

That effort has found one of its most surprising successes in an ongoing exchange between Roman Catholic and Buddhist monks who study, and in some cases, live together.

Though their conception of the divine is radically different, the monks have discovered common mystic experiences. At the same time, they espouse a joint interest in working to make the temporal world a better place.

While monks pursue their quest behind monastery gates, their cultures and people have begun to overlap through television and computers, leisure travel, and migration.

The result, some scholars say, can be greater understanding or greater friction.

"Forces that have been at work for centuries have, in our day, reached a crescendo," said Ewert Cousins, a professor of theology at Fordham University and a longtime consultant to the Vatican on interfaith dialogue. "It's something that's in the air and in our times."

It is against that background that the Dalai Lama will come to DePaul University on Sunday evening to kick off the weeklong quadrennial conference of the Society of Buddhist-Christian Studies entitled "Socially Engaged Christianity and Buddhism."

The Dalai Lama also will give a public talk, together with a musical performance by composer Philip Glass and readings by Gere, at 2 p.m. Sunday at Medinah Temple. The program is being organized by the Tibetan Alliance of Chicago.

Among Buddhists, the Dalai Lama has immense standing as a boddhisattva a man who has postponed his nirvana in order return to Earth and help others toward enlightenment.

Among Westerners, his role as the exiled leader in Tibet's 46-year struggle for autonomy in the face of Chinese occupation has boosted him to near-celebrity status.

Believers say that with such credibility on both sides of the world, the Dalai Lama is uniquely situated to bring religions closer.

"He has emerged as the principal spiritual leader of the planet because of his accessibility and his love," said Brother Wayne Teasdale, a Roman Catholic monk trained in the ancient Hindu tradition of sannyasa a renunciation of all worldly things that frees a person to pursue mystical truth.

"He thinks in very, very big terms. He's got his focus on the far horizon of history," Teasdale said. "There is a duty, and he is keenly aware of it."

Not that he always looks the part.

Tenzin Gyatso, the 61-year-old man who carries the title of Dalai Lama "Ocean of Wisdom" travels light. He flies economy class. His modest entourage numbers seven.

Gyatso's adherents address him as "Your Holiness," and his seat on the dais at formal events is just a little higher than anybody else's.

But those who know him say he prefers the kind of informal conversations he gets into at receptions, conferences and even airport terminals.

He is, he tells anybody who will listen, just a simple monk.

And yet, he exerts a powerful and tenacious grip on the imaginations of people who live half a world away.

Gigi Pritzker, daughter of Hyatt Hotels patriarch Jay Pritzker, became interested in the plight of Tibet after visiting in 1980. For the next decade, her involvement with American groups espousing Tibetan independence was based on cultural and political grounds, she says. Then she met the Dalai Lama.

"I'm not someone who's involved in spirituality, and I don't like to put people on a pedestal," said Pritzker, now co-chairwoman of the Tibetan Alliance of Chicago. "But he clearly knows something the rest of us don't. He's so . . . sage."

"It sounds corny, but he has a real aura to him," said Steve Schroeder, president of a Chicago-area manufacturing company and one of the coordinators of the Dalai Lama's visit. "There is no ego, no fear."

His oft-cited cheerfulness is all the more remarkable when one looks at the Dalai Lama's life.

Born Lhamo Dhondrub, he was one of 16 children of a peasant family in northeastern Tibet. He was 2 years old when Tibetan monks went on a search for the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama, who had died a few years earlier.

There are many versions of what happened next, but they share some features: The monks were led by visions to the village where the boy lived. When they came to his house, they tested him, placing a row of common objects in front of the toddler. Without hesitation, the child picked out all the ones that belonged to the 13th Dalai Lama.

From there, the new Dalai Lama was taken to the 1,000-room Potala palace in Lhasa and raised by monks.

In 1950, his painstaking education was cut short and his advisers thrust him into full political control as Chinese troops invaded Tibet.

The 15-year-old ruler could not hold off the Chinese. He spent the next nine years trying to negotiate a peace that would allow Tibetans a measure of freedom. Face-to-face meetings with Mao Tse-tung yielded no progress, and a 1959 crackdown drove the Dalai Lama and his government into exile in Dharamsala, India.

Since then, the Dalai Lama has presided over more than 100,000 Tibetans in exile.

At the same time, he finished his religious education and began traveling the world in 1967, teaching Tibetan Buddhism and pleading Tibet's cause to foreign governments. He has met informally with Presidents Bush and Clinton, both of whom downplayed the visits to avert Chinese wrath. The United States does not officially recognize the Tibetan government in exile.

The Dalai Lama has met repeatedly with Pope John Paul II since 1980.

His only other visit to Chicago was in 1993 when he addressed the centennial session of the Parliament of the World's Religions in Grant Park.

If movement toward a global religious community sounds far-fetched, Teasdale noted that it need not mean abandoning principles. He cited the Dalai Lama as an example.

"I think that the best path for everyone is to remain rooted in the tradition in which they were born, then open their hearts to other traditions," Teasdale said.

He added that Chicago, where the world's religions live side-by-side if not always together is a good place to start.

PHOTO (color): The Dalai Lama. Tribune file photo.

PHOTO (color): The Dalai Lama's previous trip to Chicago was in 1993. Local Tibetans are creating special art objects for next week's visit. Tribune photo by John Lee.

PHOTO (color): Artist Lobsang Yarphel and assistant Penpa Tsering create a ceremonial gate for the Dalai Lama's visit Sunday and Monday in Chicago. Tribune photo by John Lee.