Well-known travel writer Pico Iyer first met the Dalai Lama decades ago when his father paid a visit to Dharamsala, India, to meet with the recently exiled spiritual leader of Tibet. As a result, Iyer has had a unique access to the Dalai Lama for much of his life. Iyer is neither a devotee of Buddhism nor an activist on Tibet. Rather, in The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Iyer is interested in teasing out the complexity of these issues and how Westerners have responded to having the once totally inaccessible Dalai Lama in their midst.
Iyer is intent on demystifying the Western view of the Nobel Laureate Dalai Lama as a secular saint and Tibet as a Shangri-La being ruined by the Chinese. Not that Iyer is denying the Chinese are engaging in horrible practices against the Tibetans. But more to the point is that “Free Tibet” bumper stickers are useless now that ethnic Chinese outnumber Tibetans in Tibet; so, a democratic election might not find the residents choosing to “free Tibet” at all, even if given a choice. Things have happened that cannot be reversed, Iyer is noting, and the Dalai Lama more than most people fully understands that reality.
Also, Iyer, while taking pains to portray the Dalai Lama as a realist, a scientist and a rationalist, also wants us to understand just how much religion is involved in the Dalai Lama’s ability to maintain compassion, serenity and equilibrium as his world and culture have been annihilated by the Chinese government.
By demystifying the Dalai Lama, Iyer is able to present more clearly the picture of the man and his teachings. The result is a vastly more human Dalai Lama who does not necessarily share the liberal cultural values we apply to him.
We learn, for example, that the Dalai Lama is opposed to homosexuality or any sodomy because of a single obscure scripture. When another scholar argues with that scripture, the Dalai Lama is willing to reconsider his entire view on the topic. Iyer does not give the final ruling. But this is the person who comes across to us in Iyer’s book, a man willing to change always in the face of new evidence, even as his certain core principles do not alter.
The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama
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Pico Iyer
Knopf, $24