The Dalai Lama, my Father, and I

For many years, my father had an inexplicable wish to meet the Dalai Lama.

Inexplicable because a staunch Arya Samaji, he is far removed from Buddhist philosophy. He has been too engrossed ‘to make something of his life’ to delve into a way of life or viewpoint different from his default understanding. And to me it was a crazy wish, how could we –with no connections to this world—ever dream of having a personal meeting with this spiritual leader who was venerated and feted by the world.

In a public sector career which was unfulfilled, in part because he never did have great relationship skills – he turned his attention to making statues of aluminum and brass by the lost wax method. It brought into bearing his knowledge of foundry process (which was his work in a large steel plant) of melting metal into casts of plaster of paris.

Driven by his need to ‘becoming’ something, he devoted  great time and attention to this hobby, which became an obsession, filling reams of diaries with notations of calculations, results of experiments. As children, we competed with this project for his attention. He continued tinkering with, fine-tuning, polishing these pieces for 40 years—till his early nineties (he is 93 now) , until his health gave in.

Initially he had the idea of selling them, but started gifting them away to family, grand-children and friends. There was one piece – a brass Buddha Head— which  he had kept aside to be presented to the Dalai Lama. For many years he wrote to the office of His Holiness, asking how he could hand it over. I didn’t take much interest (I was a big skeptic of this plan), and ofcourse there was no answer.

I also started noticing how caught up I was in my own life—with the process of ‘becoming’. I was driven with my own goals, need for achievement, to reach here and reach there. Perhaps in the wish of receiving an acknowledgement from the world that I was ‘something’. I was realizing that the very things that annoyed me in my father, were exactly the same in me. He was always restless- even when we visited him, he would be busily attending to paperwork of his shares, or something. It was hard for him to ‘just be’. And I had the same difficulty in ‘being’ in my pursuit of ‘becoming’. After dinner was over at home, I would be restless to get back to my work.

I got in touch with my wish to find joy in gardening, in hanging out with friends which had no objective, to drop everything and go for a walk when the weather was nice, to linger on at dinner table conversations, instead of obsessing about more books to read, more training techniques to devour and more clients to acquire. The yearning was to find a contentment, a sense of well being which was not dependent on what I was ‘becoming’, but in just ‘being’. I had ‘swallowed’ the programming of my father, and have bought into this belief that my self worth depended on how competent and how successful I was. In the course of these insights, I decided to write to the office of His Holiness, explaining my father’s wish. I didn’t really have much hope of having a meeting, but my father seemed to be confident. When I was tidying his cupboard in one of my visits, he said, ‘put this shirt aside, I will wear it to meet the Dalai Lama’.

To my surprise, we got a reply almost immediately. The Dalai Lama was passing through Delhi, and we had an appointment!

As we (my father, my daughter and I) waited in the lobby of the hotel, along with a handful of other invitees, I was struck by the kindness and graciousness with which we were treated by the organizers. There was no hurry. A comfortable seat was found for my father. And yet there was no waiting, as everything was on time.

When His Holiness arrived, he hugged my father as if he knew his angst, and as if He had all the time in the world, listened to my father explain his favourite lost wax process and accepted the figurine from him. I watched the two of them, feeling choked and overwhelmed as my father’s dearest wish came true. I was enveloped in his Holiness’ ‘being’, which emanated love and immense kindness for all- it seemed to flow from a deep unending source – which seemed to say you don’t have to reach anywhere or prove anything, all you have to do is love and accept yourself as you are, and others the way they they are.

It was a day of healing, for my father, and me.