Barney posted a wonderful story as a comment to my Wednesday post. I want to make sure you don’t miss it, so here it is:
Some years ago I attended a lecture given in Lambeth Palace by the Dalai Lama. His wisdom was astounding and delivered with love and humility. As a Baha’i I found myself recognizing and resonating with pretty much everything he said.
There was time for questions at the end of the lecture. An Anglican priest stood up and delivered himself of a long and complex question. The Dalai Lama, who had spoken in English throughout, had a whispered consultation with his interpreter and then smiled at us. ‘Very difficult question,’ he said. ‘Cannot answer.’
If I’d had any doubt about the Dalai Lama’s wisdom, his reponse to this pompous question confirmed the depth of his spirituality. He was not tempted to play intellectual games with his audience. His purpose was far more serious than that.
Thanks again Barney, and interesting to hear your take as a Baha’i on what was said. Just reaffirms the one-ness.
And as we’re talking about His Holiness the Dalai Lama, I’d like to re-recommend a book I first mentioned in this post. It’s called A Beginner’s Guide to Changing the World, For Tibet, With Love, by a funny, intelligent and passionate British writer, Isabel Losada. (Intriguingly, early editions of the book refer to it as For Tibet, With Love, A Beginner’s Guide etc., and later editions have dropped the For Tibet… bit completely. But I digress.)
Not to spoil the book for you, but in the end Isabel is granted a personal audience with the Dalai Lama. This is part of her description:
And then… A man enters with an energy I’ve not felt before. A huge energy. It really is The Dalai Lama. For a moment I feel a strange desire to run…
I’m not one given to describing people’s ‘energy fields’. I don’t see auras. I’m not psychic. But here is an energy that even I can feel. The man is huge. Physically I see an elderly Tibetan. He is approaching seventy years old, not thin, not overweight. He isn’t particularly tall and his face is, well, it is just as we’ve all seen it smiling from a million pictures. No surprises there. And he is warm and modest, just as I’d expected. But this energy… what is this? I feel myself lost.
…And yet this warmth. This love that I am being bathed in. Where am I?
I mean absolutely no disrespect when I say I’m sure that’s what it would have felt like 2000 years ago in Galilee, meeting a certain itinerant preacher.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Interesting how our perceptions of the physical size of such spiritual giants are shaped by our sensing of their spiritual reality. Such, certainly, was the experience of many who met ‘Abdu’l-Baha, Head of the Baha’i community from 1892 to his death in 1921. Many were touched to the very core of their beings and utterly transformed by their encounters with him. ‘Abdu’l-Baha, like his Father, Baha’u'llah, was physically of moderate height and build, and yet his spiritual energy made him seem much larger to those who met him.
I know very little about the Dalai Lama, but every time I’ve seen him I’ve been drawn to just look at his picture. He does absolutely radiate a beautiful energy.
I have a masseuse who has been working on me through therapeutic massage for over a year. The moment I met her I loved her. She is a funny mix of laid back, new age, party-girl with a beautiful laugh and an openness in her that I rarely see. She has brought amazing healing to me through her work and we’ve had numerous conversations about spiritual things. She’s this zaftig gal that is about my height, but whenever I think of her, she appears much bigger to me. One day she told me she has a picture taken of her aura. (As a side note I find this fascinating, but I’m not sure how it would fit into my faith, etc.) Anyway, when the picture was developed, she said her aura shot out at least six feet from her in all directions. When compared to the other pics of her friends, theirs were only a foot or two. I can believe this totally. I feel the energy coming from her and I think some people just have this for one reason or another.