Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [130]
He sounds so much like Rudra Cakrin. Suddenly it’s hard to believe that such an idiosyncratic mind as Rudra Cakrin’s can be gone. Many of the people here presumably do not believe it. The man speaking is agreed to be the fourteenth reincarnation of a particular mind or soul. Although in an interview published that morning in the Post, the Dalai Lama was asked when he had first recalled his previous lives, and he replied, “I have never had that experience,” and then added, “I am an ordinary human being.” He did not even make any particular claim to special knowledge, or expertise in anything metaphysical.
Now he says, “What happens beyond our senses we cannot know. All we can see indicates that everything is transitory.”
This is not the kind of thing a religious leader is expected to say—admissions of ignorance, jokes about translation error. The whole situation feels nonreligious, more like a fireside chat than the Sermon on the Mount. Maybe the Sermon on the Mount would have felt like that too.
“Knowledge is important, but much more important is the use toward which it is put. This depends on the heart and mind of the one who uses it.”
It’s the argument for always-generous. Even if you only manage to love your own DNA, it exists in a diffuse extension through the biosphere. All the eukaryotes share the basic genes; all life is one. If you love yourself, or just want to survive—or maybe those are the same thing—then the love has to diffuse out into everything, just to be accurate.
To love accurately. The Dalai Lama says something about mindful consumption. We eat the world the way we breathe it. Thanks must be given, devotion must be given. One must pay attention, to do what is right for life.
These were all the things a sociobiologist would recommend, if he could talk about what ought to be as well as what is. Buddhism as the Dalai Lama’s science; science as the scientist’s Buddhism. Again, as when Rudra Cakrin gave his lecture at NSF, it all becomes clear.
Time passes in a flow of ideas. A couple of hours, in fact; no concessions to any suppposedly short attention spans. And the crowd is still silent and attentive. The time has gone fast somehow, and now the Dalai Lama is winding things up by answering a few questions submitted by e-mail, read by his translator from a printout.
“Last question, Rebecca Sampson, fifth grade: Why does China want Tibet so bad?”
Nervous titter from the crowd.
The Dalai Lama tilts his head to the side. “Tibet is very beautiful,” he says, in a way that makes everyone laugh. A certain tension dissipates. “Tibet has a lot of forests. Animals, minerals—not so many vegetables.” Another surprised laugh, rustling unamplifed through the arena like wind in the trees.
“Most of all, Tibet has room. China is a big country, but it has a lot of people. Too many people for them to care for on their own land, over the long term. And Tibet is at the roof of Asia. When you are in Tibet, no one can attack you from above! So, there are these strategic reasons. But most of them, when examined, are not very important. And I see signs that the Chinese are beginning to realize that. There are ways of accommodating everybody’s desires, and so I see some progress on this matter. They are willing to talk now. It will all come in time.”
Soon after that they are done. Everyone is standing and clapping. A moment of union. Thirteen thousand human beings, all thankful at once.
Say good-bye to the Quiblers. Wander with the crowd, disoriented, uncaring; it doesn’t matter where you leave the building. Just get outside and figure out then where you are.
Outside. Westward on H Street. Quickly separate from the crowd that has witnessed together such an event: back among the strangers of the city. No more union. Over to G Street