KEY POINTS:
'It will be like interviewing Jesus," gushed an atheist of my acquaintance before I went to see the Dalai Lama. Quite sensible people go quite ga-ga over the Dalai Lama, who would be horrified to think that he was just like Jesus. The Dalai Lama has better jokes. At least I think he does. A lot of things that were probably jokes got lost in translation. But most of what is on my tape is laughing, and most of it is him.
Why does he laugh all the time? He was, I remind him, a very bad-tempered child.
"Oh, yes! At the young age, I followed my father's sort of ... hot head practice. Ha ha ha. Then later I follow my mother's example. Ha ha ha. But still, if I see people doing some silly things, I may lose my temper!"
"Also," he says, fixing me with what is supposed to be a faintly menacing stare (he is not very good at this; the corners of his mouth are already flickering in anticipation of the punchline), "if you ask some silly questions, I may lose my temper. Ha ha ha."
I wouldn't care for him to lose his temper. He has already begun whacking my leg, quite hard, I might add, for a smiling monk who preaches non-violence. He will, I count, whack my leg five times in 20 minutes, each time more affectionately and hence harder. You wouldn't want him to be your best friend, you'd end up black and blue.
I had read that you are not allowed to touch the Dalai Lama, and that, on leaving, you should walk backwards away from him. This was what one journalist was told, many years ago, and when he left the room as directed, the Dalai Lama watched for a bit, then turned him around and gave him a friendly push. This sounds like another of his little jokes, but I'm not taking any chances. When we arrive at the hotel I ask the bloke dealing with the media what the protocol is.
Just follow His Holiness' lead, I'm told. I did wonder, briefly, what would happen if I had, and had whacked the Dalai Lama's leg in return, but that might have been pushing it. He is supposed to be the manifestation of a deity. I don't think you are supposed to ask him about this although it isn't banned. Nothing is, except silly, prurient questions. He was asked these sorts of questions once before in New Zealand and he didn't laugh.
What you really get - because the room was full of people to help translate, to guard, or just to sit in the room with the Dalai Lama and laugh at his jokes - is an audience rather than an interview.
But I've never sat in a room with the manifestation of a deity before and, as he is 71 and talking about retirement, I am unlikely to ever again.
In truth, you don't get to ask many questions (my half hour was whittled down to 20 minutes due to some deeply unspiritual malarkey about the air conditioning unit.) Also, he is a long talker, and questions are often referred to the translator, which takes up still more time. Sometimes, the four-way translations from me to the Dalai Lama, to the translator, and back to the Dalai Lama go spectacularly awry.
He is talking about the attainment of happiness and I have asked (in an attempt to find out whether his happy, always laughing monk image is adequate) whether, and notwithstanding his early bad temper, he was simply born happy. Which leads him to an explanation of how important a mother's affection for a child is. Which leads him to ... this.
"The mother gives the hugs. And, [to the translator] what is this small thing? You see?"
Translator: The nipple?
Dalai Lama: "Aah! The nipple! The nipple in the child's mouth. It feels very happy."
Partly the difficulties were my fault. I should never have attempted to say something about a photo the Herald ran of him last week: with a koala. What a peculiar life you have, I say, whizzing round the world, patting horrible diseased koala bears.
This goes to the translator but I rather feel he left the bit about the koala out because the Dalai Lama says, "Oh, that I always do! If I have some little power then of course I want to cure these sick people but then there is no other way, except with a touch of my hand. I share in their suffering, that's all."
I don't think the headline either of us had in mind was: Dalai Lama Cures Koala.
He is having another little joke saying this at all because earlier I ask him what he thinks people want from him. Do they want him to tell them the meaning of life? "Oh! Some people want some kind of miracle, ha, ha, healing. This is wrong. It's nonsense. I always make clear when I give the talk that some people may come with too much expectation, and that's nonsense."
You're out of luck, too, if you want him to tell you how to be happy.
"Some of them [do.] Their happiness will not come from the sky! Or through miracle. Well, of course I have very little power and them among six billion human beings, I don't think there is someone who really has miracle power."
What he talks about is the "importance of warm heartedness that I consider the basis of peace of mind, peace of mind is the basis of happy life, or successful life. Even when you come across some difficulties, with peace of mind you can handle it better".
He says it so nicely, with big smiles, that he could be saying "bumph, bumph, bumph" for an hour and we'd all still lap it up.
But what is it, exactly? Other than awareness of Tibet, and the idea of happiness. He certainly isn't promoting Buddhism to Westerners because he doesn't think Westerners should be Buddhists. Not really. "Hmm. It is more risky. You have your own tradition, your whole culture ... It is safer to keep to your own tradition."
I suggest that his gift is for, as he puts it, being able to talk to audiences of thousands in a way that, "someone told me ... each individual feels as if I'm conversing with them like old friends". This is not a gift. It is "through training, through training".
I wondered what he thought of being always portrayed as the laughing monk, when he is a serious person with serious issues to raise about Tibet. He says he is a serious person. He believes in starting from a place of scepticism - "very, very important. Scepticism brings questions, questions brings investigation. So I am serious but not formal".
He has been a "refugee" since 1959 when he fled Tibet for India. This has shaped his destiny, obviously, as the leader in exile of the Tibetan people but also, he says, his character.
He says he dreams sometimes of Tibet but the reality is that he will be a refugee for the rest of his life.
"But my main concern is: your life should be meaningful, that means something useful to others. So I think, as a matter of fact, being a refugee gives more opportunity to serve a greater number of people."
He says he feels he has been more "useful from outside [Tibet] rather than inside. Also, if I remain in Lhasa, I think the 14th Dalai Lama still may be a more reserved person. I think since I have become a refugee, now the 14th Dalai Lama is becoming like a human being! Ha ha ha."
Which, I suppose, takes care of any question I might have had about what it's like being a manifestation of a deity. He is, I hazard, a rather earthy sort of monk. This goes to the translator and comes back as "down-to-earth" which wasn't quite what I meant. He had been telling me about how he doesn't get jet lag and still always wakes at 3.30am to meditate but that, pointing at his stomach, there are other, aah, irregularities. I don't bother to get this translated because I really do not want to know. He, of course, thinks it's hilarious.
The silliest question he's been asked, the one that made him lose his temper, is the one about what he thinks his legacy will be. This is daft, apparently, because, "I am Buddhist, a monk. I can't think about my own name. This is not right."
I did ask a silly question: What's it like being a celebrity?
"Aah! Bishop Tutu, my dear friend, he's the senior elder so ... I always let him go in the front, then, from behind, I tickle him. So these days he always describes me as the mischievous Dalai Lama!"
That is a very clever answer. As I leave, the manifestation of a deity gives me a big, human hug. It is like being hugged by a Teletubbie in a maroon pashmina. If he was to say, "big hugs," I wouldn't have been at all surprised. It couldn't have got any odder, and perhaps what the 14th Dalai Lama is all about is as strange and as simple as that.
