KEY POINTS:
When the Dalai Lama went to Parliament yesterday, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters was sad to say he could not meet him.
But happily, the leader of New Zealand First, Winston Peters, could.
Similarly, National Party leader John Key could not meet him. But he could "drop in".
So began a day of meetings that were sometimes meetings but sometimes not in diplomatic parlance for the Dalai Lama - in exile from his homeland of Tibet since it fell under Chinese rule - as he visited a land chasing a free trade agreement with China.
Nobody was quite sure what was said in the meeting with Mr Peters, but it ran half an hour over time.
The Dalai Lama cut a colourful figure, a Buddhist emissary of peace steaming from one end of the anglicised parliamentary complex to another, trailed by other monks and officials and leaving the echo of his chuckle in his wake.
He said he didn't really care who he met with.
"If a leader is willing to accept me, I'm happy, I'm honoured, but if it's not convenient, then I don't want to create inconvenience for anybody."
This second meeting was simultaneously a meeting and not a meeting. He met Murray McCully, National's foreign affairs spokesman, and Nick Smith, who chairs the parliamentary committee on Tibet.
Leader of the Opposition John Key was also there, but he did not meet with the Dalai Lama. He "dropped in".
Mr Peters later said he kept the media away not because he was sensitive about the meeting, but because it was "manners".
If so, the Green Party were very ill-mannered.
They rolled out their entire caucus, brought in some party members and staff. They put up the Tibetan flag and decked out the caucus room with prayer flags.
He returned the warmth, telling them he was passionate about ecology and "morally, I am your party's member". He shared with them delightful anecdotes about Chairman Mao feeding him with chopsticks at banquets "so I felt he was my father, giving food to me".
He then noted Mao was a chain- smoker "and so I got germs from that".
When he left to get ready for lunch, he got stuck in the lift until an engineer arrived to let him out. Nobody dared mention karma. He laughed.
He met the Maori Party's Hone Harawira, who greeted him with a ferocious one-man haka as the Dalai Lama walked up the steps to lunch.
The Dalai Lama responded to the warrior by gently clasping Harawira's hand and leading him up the steps.
Helen Clark, who bumped into the Dalai Lama in Brisbane airport's departure lounge last week, came close to another serendipitous moment yesterday.
She was due to meet Catholic schoolchildren on the forecourt half an hour after the Dalai Lama was to attend a luncheon hosted by United Future leader Peter Dunne.
The Dalai Lama was late. The Prime Minister was due.
A collision was avoided by moments and when the Dalai Lama popped out the rubber door - a small door beneath the main entrance of Parliament House - Helen Clark was buried under a group of students and his car left before their eyes could meet.
