Theos-Talk Archives (April 2005 Message tt00111)

In a message dated 4/4/05 8:26:18 AM Central Daylight Time, 
thalprin@yahoo.com writes:

<< 
Yeah, and then maybe someone can begin to help me understand why the 
Dali Lama gives me the creeps. I feel sick for just 
thinking/feeling like that but nonetheless the guy creeps me out.
>>

I don't know. The couple of times I encountered him he seemed a very nice 
person, in spite of his Tibetan accent. 

The first time was in July of 1981, when he came to Olcott, to the great joy 
of the assembled Theosophists and the consternation of the poor Mayor of 
Wheaton, Illinois, who did not know quite what to say but what undoubtedly 
thinking, "First Billy Graham down the road, now the Dalai Lama! What next? The 
Pope???"

I found myself dragooned into helping to carry a damned harp, which weighed 
more than my girlfriend, and His Lamaness was watching us struggle with the 
cursed thing and asked me if I was all right.

The second time was at the 1993 World Parliament of Religions. Gerda 
Thompson and I were walking down the long hall of the Palmer House in Chicago and 
discovered that a friend of ours had taken a spill over a luggage cart and had 
injured her ankle. We were attending to her when along came the DL and his 
squad of security goons. He was supposed to go into the elevator, but instead he 
broke away from his guardians and headed towards us. They had a terrible time 
catching him and turning him the right way because they had to get him into 
the elevator and did not want to offend him. He did manage to get off a 
gesture of blessing at us.

The problem he faces is that he is locked into his role. Everything he does 
and says is determined by that, so it is impossible to know the real man under 
that title. 

Chuck the Heretic