New York Daily News

June 8, 1997

The hottest ticket in town walked into the cavernous, packed-to-the-walls Cathedral of St. John the Divine and was greeted with the kind of awe usually reserved for a god or king.

It so happens that the Dalai Lama is considered both.

He turns 62 next month, the once and forever 14th god-king of Tibet, the Victorious, the Precious, the Presence, and for the past 38 years, the Exile from his beloved, long-occupied Himalayan homeland.

His recent visit to New York was a pointed reminder that the city has become the most important rallying point in the longshot campaign to restore him to temporal power.

It also gave the small Tibetan community 97 and the much larger Buddhist community 97 a chance to see and hear him in person. And it inspired a half-dozen other "blissed" events, among them, a marathon, cymbal-tinkling poetry reading on the Great Hill in Central Park.

And today there is the second of two Tibetan Freedom Concerts on Randalls Island seeking to raise consciousness regarding Chinese repression of Tibetan culture.

The Dalai Lama's only appearance was at the cathedral, where he talked of "Harmony in Diversity" to rapturous hipsters and respectful devotees who wouldn't have cared if he'd read the Queens telephone directory.

His appeal, followers say, is his ability to communicate a sense of inner peace.

"That's it for me," says Diana Tataka, a convert who is spokeswoman for Tibet House here. "I like the sense of developing a calm, harmonious inner self. I think that's what we all feel."

Richard Gere is a follower. So is Bianca Jagger. And composer Philip Glass.

And, maybe most important of all, Robert Thurman, father of Uma Thurman, a professor at the American Institute of Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, founded Tibet House a decade ago as a place of study, meditation and culture.

This summer, Tibet House will move from the East Side to a new and much larger homein Chelsea.

There is a Tibetan hotline, web site (www.infinite.org/bodhiline), art gallery, museum and student political action organization that campaigns to restore the Dalai Lama to his throne.

The Chinese, who invaded Tibet in 1950 and, nine years later, forced the Dalai Lama into exile, are not likely to let him return home until he accepts their terms 97 and this is even more unlikely.

The Dalai Lama, whose official exile residence is an old British bungalow in Upper Dharamsala, India, near the Pakistan border, has negotiated for years with the Chinese.

But, he says, he will not return home until conditions are better for his people.

By all accounts, the Dalai Lama remains a simple man in complex times and despite his keen interest in technology and machinery, he devotes as many as four hours a day, wherever he is, to prayer and meditation. Aides say that he eats only two meals a day and spends hours keeping up with current events.

The story of the current Dalai Lama is both extraordinarily romantic and dramatic, the stuff of myths. In this Dalai Lama's case, it began Dec. 17, 1933, the day the 13th Dalai Lama died.

The Dalai Lamas are considered earthly incarnations of the Bodhisattva Chenrezi, or Avalokitesvara, the Lord of Compassion. A bodhisattva is someone so virtuous that he has transcended the cycle of birth, death and rebirth 97 he is reborn for the sake of humankind.

When the 13th Dalai Lama died, curious cloud formations and other omens suggested that the 14th Dalai Lama would come from a northeasterly direction from Lhasa, the capital.

Search parties fanned out, and near the Chinese border, two monks located a 2-year-old peasant boy named Llamo.

The boy climbed onto the lap of the leading monk and grabbed the rosary he was wearing. The rosary had belonged to the 13th Dalai Lama.

The boy possessed all the right physical characteristics 97 long ears, moles in the right places on his torso and two folds of skin at the shoulder blades.

Once the monks were satisfied that the boy was the Dalai Lama, the boy was escorted to the holy city of Lhasa, where on Feb. 22, 1940, he was installed on the Lion throne. At 18, he assumed secular and religious power.