This Is This

Last week I went to see the Dalai Lama and I said I’d write more about it. I started doing it as a straight piece for a magazine or something but then gave up because I’ve been busy. As well as new puppy and co-writing a sitcom, I’ve been doing some DIY. That’s Do It Yourself for any non-British readers. If you’re French, it’s “bricolage”, although if you need me to explain that then I probably lost you way back in the oven peas.

“Petit-pois au four”? Man, they’d go nuts wouldn’t they? Alors qu’est ce que c’est tous ca? C’est pas vrai. Les Anglais lessent cuir leur petit pois dans le four? Mais ils sont malade.

I have a love hate relationship with DIY. On the one hand I’d rather, I’d rather do a spot of PSOPSTDIFY (Pay Some Other Poor Sap To Do It For You), especially with large undertakings, but then it’s always good when they are done. And all this attitude despite the fact that I can put up shelves like a motherfucker.

You see, I’ve sworn already. Here I was sanded, primed and ready with a first coat to talk about last Thursday’s talk and I’ve blown this post already.

No. No, I haven’t. I can still do this. I’ve just stalled her. If I point the nose down I might get enough air into the jets to get them going again and pull out of the dive to get this bird back home. Hang on, now, OK? Stay with me. You stay with me. We’re not going out like this. Not today. Not on my watch. Now that light there, what does it say?

The Dalai Lama took to the stage of the Royal Albert Hall to the expected standing ovation and rapturous applause, wearing his traditional robes and a joyful expression. He shielded his eyes to the spotlight as he gazed out into the darkness and then leant back to look up to the gallery with an expression of sudden delight.

Maybe he realised it was because he matched the scarlet décor right down to the yellow flair or perhaps because he didn’t expect such a warm reception. Whatever the reason, it was a spontaneous demonstration of the simple charm of a man who appears to take nothing for granted.

He started the talk by thanking the Tibet Society for their invitation to speak in London, stopping to check with his translator if this was the third or fourth time he had spoken at the venue. “I think three. Four? Maybe four, yes, but I think three. No matter.”

He settled himself in his armchair, sitting in a half lotus position, with legs crossed. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I just take a minute to get comfortable. I am not going to sit in silence and meditate for the whole time instead of talking.”

He let out an infectious chuckle which still lingers with me two days later.

He said he was going to talk for about forty minutes and then answer some questions. “Forty minutes, thirty minutes, depending on my mood.” He adopted a serious look and said: “If the mood is bad and I’m not enjoying myself, talk shorter.” Then his face lit up and he pointed a finger at the crowd and said: “But if my mood is good, then fourty minutes,” he waved his hand in a carefree way, “or much longer. We shall see. I hope my mood will be good.”

The most endearing thing to me about the Dalai Lama is that his uncertainty is as endearing as his statements are engrossing.

“Whatever I say,” he said later, “you must find out from your own studies. Just because I say, you should investigate, investigate.”

He talked about the importance of human values, saying they were the same as religious values, and that religious values were all the same. He said how a Muslim friend of his said Islam was about helping others, and that Buddhism was about ending suffering. He waved the labels away as the same precepts.

“When you wake up in the morning, and you are getting ready and washing and thinking about the day, you do not say: ‘Today, I hope there will be more problems.’ You want less problems. These are human values. They are human values first and religious vaues second.”

Amen right there. Um - you know what I mean. Right on. Namaste?

Or just thank you.

I think a sign of talent is to present something that that no one else would have considered but makes perfect sense. Bach did it, Leonardo Da Vinci, The Beatles, Steven Speilberg, it happens in all fields and sometimes it’s the simplest of things which are the easiest to explain but the most elusive. If you can pluck that stuff out of thin air, that’s all a person could ask for.

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