"I Am a Human Being: a Monk"

The exiled Dalai Lama opens his U.S. tour -- in a cathedral

"Whoever would have thought the Dalai Lama would be at St. Patrick's Cathedral?" marveled Newsman Lowell Thomas, 87, who brought Tibet's onetime leader international fame after visiting Lhasa in 1949. But last week there he was, with Terence Cardinal Cooke, speaking in New York City's Roman Catholic landmark. A smiling, maroon-robed holy man, the Dalai Lama is regarded by millions of Tibetans as the incarnation of one of the most powerful and beloved Buddhist divinities.

It seemed a splendid start for his first U.S. tour, which will take him to 22 cities in seven weeks. Though there was little advance publicity, the nave of St. Patrick's was filled to overflowing with a crowd in which young people were heavily represented. In the U.S. many people 30 and younger are drawn to Oriental religions that explore inner spiritual resources through meditative techniques. The Dalai Lama says he is particularly interested in meeting this "younger generation," and he plans to do some gentle evangelizing at campuses from Cambridge to Charlottesville to Ann Arbor to Berkeley. He will also visit other centers that serve America's nearly 200,000 Buddhists.

The St. Patrick's prayer service was an extraordinary interreligious festival. The Dalai Lama, 44, was surrounded by a group of Protestant, Armenian, Catholic and Jewish clergy. To lend a Tibetan air to the proceedings, a group of monks clanged cymbals and blew traditional horns. The Dalai Lama, who was greeted with a standing ovation, had earlier declared that "all the world's major religions are basically the same." But the host at the service, Cardinal Cooke, was more cautious, perhaps to assure traditional Catholics who had come into the church to light candles at the side altars. No syncretistic one-world religion was in the making, the soft-spoken Cardinal noted, but believers in different creeds can seek "common ground" and "make each other welcome" in their houses of worship.

Speaking in halting English, the lama told a press conference that Buddhism, particularly the distinctive Tibetan form, has something to offer the materialistic West: "Through centuries, we have acquired some knowledge of mind." He added, in St. Patrick's, that "one of the most important things is compassion. You cannot buy compassion in one of New York's big shops."

He also stresses that his visit is private and "nonpolitical." Nonetheless, in Washington, D.C., this week he will deliver a public lecture on spiritual development at D.A.R. Constitution Hall, as well as meet with Congressmen and the members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He has been trying to visit the U.S. for six years, but the State Department has always discouraged the trip, telling him it would be "inconvenient," specifically because of protracted and delicate negotiations with Peking.

Dalai comes from the Mongolian word for ocean, to signify broad knowledge. A lama is a spiritual teacher, akin to the Sanskrit guru. In Tibet, though, the Dalai Lama was head of state and revered not merely as a holy man but as the incarnate Lord of Compassion. His person is crucial to the fate of his landlocked Himalayan homeland, and thus to relations with China and the Soviet Union. He has lived in exile in Dharmsala, India, since 1959, when he fled after Chinese troops crushed a rebellion by Tibetans. His country, he told TIME Correspondent Marcia Gauger, has yet to enjoy the modest liberalization that is occurring in China itself. Though their situation is improving slightly, Tibetans "are not at all happy. They practically remain prisoners. The Chinese are not yet matured fully" in their religious policy. Conditions for Buddhists, he noted, are far better in the Soviet Union and its satellite Mongolia, two nations he visited last June.

Despite the reverence in which he is held, the Dalai Lama does not regard himself as a god. "I am a human being: a Buddhist monk," he says. But he is the reincarnation of his predecessor and became Dalai Lama in the traditional way. At the age of two, he was found in a peasant's hut in Taktser after a long search during which monks used divinations and sought miraculous signs to reveal his whereabouts. They confirmed their discovery of reincarnation by having the child identify objects associated with his predecessor. All that traditional procedure could disappear now, he says. The next leader of the religion could possibly be chosen by a meeting of high lamas, something like the election of a Pope. In any case the 14th Dalai Lama also knows he could be the last. "It depends whether it is something useful for the nation or not. If not, that is all right. Nothing serious."

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