The Dalai Lama is a meat-eater

Tenzin Takhla, who is also the Dalai Lama’s nephew, explained that the world’s most famous monk has a habit of providing long, detailed, even meandering answers — dangerous in an interview limited to an hour.

“Be careful when you are asking historical questions,” he said with a smile.

Seven months of the year, the Dalai Lama is on the road, travelling at the invitation of foreign countries who pay his trip-related expenses. He flies commercial overseas, and is usually seated with eight staffers in business class. Within India, flight agents on Kingfisher Airlines, the only company that offers flights between New Delhi and Dharamsala, reserve him seats in the back rows of a prop jet, allowing him to board at the last minute to avoid drawing attention.

Considering he’s 75, His Holiness has a packed schedule.

His staff tries to keep Sundays free. On other days, he wakes up without the help of an alarm clock at 3:30 a.m. and mediates for the first five hours of the day, taking a break for a breakfast of black tea, cornflakes and milk, porridge, Tibetan bread with jams, and fruits such as papaya.

Unlike most Buddhist monks, who don’t eat meat because they believe it’s wrong to slaughter any sentient being, the Dalai Lama is not a vegetarian.

“In the 1960s, he tried it for a bit but had to give it up after he got sick with hepatitis,” explains Takhla.

His compromise is to eat vegetarian in Dharamsala and meat dishes when he’s on the road and it’s offered by his hosts.

At about 9 a.m. most mornings, the Dalai Lama arrives in his offices here for scheduled meetings and audiences, many of which are with newly arrived refugees from Tibet. Media interviews are uncommon. His office receives about 400 requests a month and accepts about seven or eight, Takhla said.

While U.S. actor Richard Gere is a longtime ally of His Holiness, Takhla said he couldn’t remember another such celebrity requesting an audience in Dharamsala. “No movie stars, no singers,” Takhla said. After a pause, he mentioned the Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker, who wrote The Color Purple, had visited the Dalai Lama here.

“There are occasional meetings when we’re on the road in different countries.” Takhla said.

Lunch, the Dalai Lama’s final meal of the day, is at about 11 a.m. and typically includes servings of rice, steamed dumplings, cooked vegetables such as eggplant, potatoes and peas.

Sitting in his office, decorated by a few political cartoons lampooning China and a map with pins marking the many countries the Dalai Lama has visited, Takhla said the Dalai Lama’s staff now uses two computers. One is hooked up to the Internet. The other isn’t, and is used for sensitive matters and to type up official correspondence.

In March 2009, Canadian researchers alleged China-based hackers had penetrated the Dalai Lama’s computer servers here, stealing months worth of email correspondence.

“We don’t really use email at all with our overseas missions now,” Takhla said. “It’s all done by post or by hand couriers.”

It’s hard to create a list of compelling questions that the Dalai Lama hasn’t been asked already.

He’s been asked about his hobbies (gardening, feeding birds, reading books on World War I), his views on birth control (he is a proponent) and his weaknesses, which has prompted some unexpected answers. During an interview in 1993 with The New York Times, the Dalai Lama said his weaknesses include anger and attachments.

“I’m attached to my watch and my prayer beads,” he said. “Then, of course, sometimes beautiful women. . . . But then, many monks have the same experience. Some of it is curiosity: If you use this, what is the feeling? (He points to his groin.)”

A friend suggested mentioning to His Holiness the actor Bill Murray’s 1980 comedy Caddyshack, which contained one of the first pop culture references to His Holiness. Murray’s character, a golf course groundskeeper named Carl Spackler, said he’d caddied once for the Dalai Lama.

“So we finish the 18th and he’s gonna stiff me,” Spackler said. “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.”

“He’s been asked about that many times,” Takhla said. “But no, he hasn’t seen the movie.”

In truth, the Dalai Lama knows little about sports or cinema. He had no idea who Tiger Woods was when American journalist Larry King asked about Woods’s personal tribulations during a recent interview and over the past 14 years, he has only seen two movies. One was Kundun, Martin Scorsese’s visually arresting film about his life.

“He invited us to a personal screening at his studio,” Takhla said. The second movie was Indian actor Shahrukh Khan’s Bollywood film Ashoka the Great, which the Dalai Lama watched under similar circumstances.

His Holiness does like to read. His office subscribes to Newsweek and Time for him and tries to get him copies of the International Herald Tribune whenever possible.

For an interview scheduled at 1:15 p.m., Takhla asks visitors to show up at his office at 12:45, with passports and security forms filled out for the Indian police who guard the Dalai Lama’s temple and residence. After walking through the first of two security checks, visitors walk through a large courtyard with closed-circuit cameras, pillars painted a mellow yellow, and a large metal signboard calling for the release of the Panchen Lama, the second-ranking lama in Tibetan Buddhism behind the Dalai Lama.

The Panchen Lama has been in Chinese “protective custody” and his whereabouts have remained a mystery for more than 15 years.

A second security check is more thorough, and then guards with walkie-talkies usher visitors past a courtyard where monks chip away making miniature Buddha statues. There’s a basketball net that’s used occasionally by the Dalai Lama’s security detail, a monk explains.

After 30 minutes in a waiting room, where tables are covered with Tibetan human rights reports and other pamphlets, it’s time to meet His Holiness.

Visitors are asked to have cameras and equipment ready before the Dalai Lama comes in. Flash photography is a no-no.

When the Dalai Lama walks in, he greets visitors with a handshake and his trademark high-pitched laugh. Other journalists have compared time spent with the Dalai Lama to William Shirer’s interviews in the 1930s with Gandhi. “You felt you were the only person in the room, that he had all the time in the world for you,” Shirer said.

Over one hour, there’s time for 23 questions, before Takhla whispers it’s time to wrap things up with a final question.

I begin to ask about Tibet’s future development and His Holiness interrupts.

“Several generations of some good things (were) put in monasteries in the form of statues or stupas,” he said. “So all this have been destroyed and carried out by Chinese. So now let them build. Okay, spend more yuan. And (build) good roads, good aerodrome, train, okay. But autonomy? Really meaningful autonomy? Tibetan affairs should be decided by Tibetans themselves. Chinese can act like advisers. Most welcome. That’s my view. Whether this materializes or not, it’s entirely up to them.”