The Dalai Lama still doesn't understand and the questioner explains to him a little bit about John Lennon and his vision. Suddenly, the Dalai Lama almost breaks into a digression, and says something like, 'All I'm doing is trying very hard to help my people and they come to me with all their suffering. Sometimes, it seems almost impossible and all I can do is try but it's very sad.'
Suddenly, in the midst of this dialogue of miscommunication, the Dalai Lama is being nothing but human and poignant. As I interpreted it, he is saying, 'I'm just a human being, but trying my best.'
A large theme of my book is who the Dalai Lama really is. The book is also about the projections we push on to him, all of us, I think: the various roles that we wish or need for him to play; so much so, I think, we obscure from ourselves who the man is. The tangle of ideas we have... that he is another worldly figure or a God; or among the Chinese government that he is a devil and a trickster. All these ideas have nothing to do with this very straightforward man.
Tell us about him, particularly in the present context of the Chinese government blaming him as the instigator of the unrest in Tibet and provoking protests worldwide against Chinese rule in Tibet.
He's the most transparent person I have ever met; which is to say I have been investigating him and talking to him for 33 years, and when I began this book (five years ago), I assumed that I held him in high regard.
Image: Tibetan monks carry the Tibetan Freedom torch and a photograph of the Dalai Lama during a demonstration on April 8 in San Francisco. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Also read: Change will come from within China
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