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Yet even as the "Protector of the Land of Snows" sustains all the secret exoticism of that otherworldly kingdom reimagined in the West as Shangri-La, he remains very much a leader in the real world. Since the age of 15, he has been forced to deal with his people's needs against the competing interests of Beijing, Washington and New Delhi. That always inflammable situation reached a kind of climax last fall, when Tibetans rioted in Lhasa, their Chinese rulers killed as many as 32 people, the Dalai Lama held his first major press conference in Dharmsala, and the U.S. Senate unanimously condemned the Chinese actions. Riots have erupted in recent weeks, but even before that, the modest man in monk's raiment had found himself not only the spiritual symbol linking 100,000 Tibetans in exile to the 6 million still living under Chinese rule, but also, more than ever, a political rallying point. "The 14th Dalai Lama may be the most popular Dalai Lama of all," he says, smiling merrily. "If the Chinese had treated the Tibetans like real brothers, then the Dalai Lama might not be so popular. So" -- he twinkles impishly -- "all the credit goes to the Chinese!"
On paper, then, the Dalai Lama is a living incarnation of a Buddha, the hierarch of a government-in-exile and a doctor of metaphysics. Yet the single most extraordinary thing about him may simply be his sturdy, unassuming humanity. The Living God is, in his way, as down to earth as the hardy brown oxfords he wears under his monastic robes, and in his eyes is still the mischief of the little boy who used to give his lamas fits with his invincible skills at hide-and-seek. He delights in tending his flower gardens, looking after wild birds, repairing watches and transistors and, mostly, just meditating. And even toward those who have killed up to 1.2 million of his people and destroyed 6,254 of his monasteries, he remains remarkably forbearing. "As people who practice the Mahayana Buddhist teaching, we pray every day to develop some kind of unlimited altruism," he says. "So there is no point in developing hatred for the Chinese. Rather, we should develop respect for them and love and compassion."
The 14th God-King of Tibet was born in a cowshed in the tiny farming village of Takster in 1935. When he was two, a search party of monks, led to his small home by a corpse that seemed to move, a lakeside vision and the appearance of auspicious cloud formations, identified him as the new incarnation of Tibet's patron god. Two years later, after passing an elaborate battery of tests, the little boy was taken amid a caravan of hundreds into the capital of Lhasa, "Home of the Gods." There he had to live alone with his immediate elder brother in the cavernous, 1,000-chamber Potala Palace and undertake an 18-year course in metaphysics. By the age of seven, he was receiving envoys from President Franklin Roosevelt and leading prayers before 20,000 watchful monks; yet he remained a thoroughly normal little boy who loved to whiz around the holy compound in a pedal car and instigate fights with his siblings. "I recall one summer day -- I must have been about seven -- when my mother took me to the Norbulingka Summer Palace to see His Holiness," recalls the Dalai Lama's youngest brother Tenzin Choegyal. "When we got there, His Holiness was watering his plants. The next thing I knew, he was turning the hose on me!"