Email to a Friend

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Me and My Lama

October 17, 2007 by Svetlana

While DC is in a tizzy about Dalai Lama being in town, Jeff (our tangent master) as per usual had to one up everyone in the city and go see the man himself at Radio City Music Hall this weekend. Needless to say it was special:

There is something about seeing the Dalai Lama in person. He has this presence, this contagious happiness, you can’t help but smile when he’s around. I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to see His Holiness surrounded by one hundred of his chaste, celibate monk-brethren on the same stage that a mere hours later would be hosting the most famous, sexiest womens’ legs in the world.

Can you imagine the follies that went on backstage that afternoon? I mean, these guys have spent their whole lives in a mountain monastery devoting their very being to god, and then they end up at Radio City Music Hall amongst droves of the longest legged temptresses in the free world.

Anyways, I spent four hours listening to the Dalai Lama speak Tibetan for 15-20 minutes at a time and then listening to his translator play catch up. I don’t know how the guy could remember 20 minutes of philosophical/religious banter without even looking at notes. He was incredible. Aside from the gratuitous close ups of Richard Gere kneeling in prayer along side the Lama (Gere absolutely has the best posture of anyone I’ve ever seen), the whole experience was breathtakingly beautiful and quite interesting. Not that I was necessarily swayed on the tenets of reincarnation (although I wouldn’t mind coming back as chambered nautilus for some reason).

We ducked out a few minutes early to beat the crowds and ended up catching the Dalai Lama coming out the side entrance to the cheers of hundreds of Tibetans and the pushing and shoving of overzealous NYPD Blue. It was quite a scene. Now, if you’re like me, you just assumed that the Dalai Lama’s means of conveyance is a caravan of Volkswagen Beetles and Mini Coopers, alternately burnt orange and golden yellow. Mini, Beetle, Mini, Beetle, etc. All with bullet proof glass and tinted windows. I’m sad to say that he is driven around in a black escalade just like every other world figure.

Oh yeah, props to Fiji Water for getting their bottles in the hands of all of the monks. It was some brilliant product placement.

You didn’t have to go to New York to catch the Lama, though. He’s in DC all week, receiving a Congressional Gold Medal tomorrow at the U.S. Capitol. The ceremony will take place at the West Lawn today, where you can watch the simulcast the proceedings in the Rotunda, beginning at 1 p.m.

this is the Lama arriving to DC:

Some further information:

The Dalai Lama is one of the world’s most popular religious leaders, and he is deeply revered by the people of Tibet.

The Rockettes are as precise and talented as ever, and their bright smiles and unison dancing evoke cheers and applause in old favorites like the “Parade of the Wooden Soldiers”. The overwhelming appeal of the Rockettes is undeniable.

In Tibetan Buddhism the successive Dalai Lamas form a lineage of allegedly reborn (tulku) magistrates which traces back to 1391.

The oldest living Rockette is Jeanette Heller, 95, living in Toronto, Canada.

The current Dalai Lama has repeatedly stated that he will never be reborn inside territory controlled by the People’s Republic of China, and has occasionally suggested that he might choose to be the last Dalai Lama by not being reborn at all

In November, 2005, the Rockette’s Christmas Spectacular’s musicians went on strike, although the show decided to go on, with the Rockettes dancing to recorded music. The strike was eventually settled, and everybody went back to work.

Me and My Lama:

Oh yeah:

Carl Spackler, Caddyshack: “So I jump ship in Hong Kong and make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas. A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So, I tell them I’m a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald… striking. So, I’m on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one – big hitter, the Lama – long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? ‘Gunga galunga… gunga, gunga-galunga’. So we finish the eighteenth and he’s gonna stiff me. And I say, ‘Hey, Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know.’ And he says, ‘Oh, uh, there won’t be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness.’ So I got that goin’ for me, which is nice.”

Email to a Friend

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•