W

Meditation: Now I’ll Tell You a Secret

Thing

e arrived at the Dalai Lama’s complex early in the morning as the
sun was still waking up. We went through the vigilant security,
which reminded us that not all were as loving toward the Dalai Lama as
he was toward them. I had decided to see the pat down, not unlike those
we are often subjected to at airports, as a brief massage rather than as an
intrusion of my personal space or as an accusation of my potential
danger. I was already learning how much one’s perspective shaped one’s
reality.
We crossed the brief distance to the Dalai Lama’s private residence.
We were later told that some of the people who had worked with the
Dalai Lama for thirty years had never been inside. This was his retreat,
one of the few places where this very public man could experience
solitude, and it was a great privilege to be welcomed into his inner
sanctum.
From the outside, the Dalai Lama’s home is a yellow-painted concrete
structure with a green roof, like so many in Dharamsala. The double
doors and walls have plenty of glass to let in the high altitude light. On
the roof is a balcony where the Dalai Lama can take a morning
constitutional and look out at his beloved greenhouse filled with purple,
pink, and white delphiniums and marigolds, bursting like tiny suns.
Beyond he can see a panoramic vista down to the lush green Indian
plains, and in the other direction the towering glacial Dhauladhar
Mountains cloaked in white snow year-round. While far less grand than
the Potala of his youth, his residence has a modest elegance and warmth
that the endless thousand-room palace, with its empty, ghost-haunted
rooms, must have lacked.