The Best of Who We Are

NOBODY HOLDS ONE as the Dalai Lama does. He can hold you inwardly, as when a six-year-old boy comes up to His Holiness in a crowded hotel lobby, white scarf extended, and the leader of the Tibetans brings all his attention and presence—not just full-bodied, but whole-hearted—to the child.

He can hold you verbally, because even in English, in a 50,000-seat auditorium, the Dalai Lama rises to a passion and intensity—when he’s speaking about his concern for the environment, the gap between rich and poor, the need for harmony between religions—that refuses to let you go.

He can hold you in memory too. Even the most jaded journalists I know recall how shaking his hand, or seeing him at their high school, somehow reoriented their lives.

And literally. Whenever His Holiness puts his arms around me, I feel held, protected—blessed—as by nobody else I’ve met.

WHEN I THINK years I’ve known His Holiness, I see him waving un-self-consciously to a friend in a tiny room in Manhattan where he’s holding a press conference in 1984, at a time when few Westerners knew what a Dalai Lama was. I see him roaring with laughter and pulling the arm of his heart’s companion, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, as they talk together about how to transform society by never assuming any outcome is final.